Coping Is a Band-Aid. Creating Heals.
You create your reality. This is great news because it puts you in the driver’s seat of your emotions, actions, and daily experiences.
Often, people think life happens TO you. Try on the possibility that life happens FOR you. So, the assignment is to create life rather than cope with circumstances. To be clear, this does not mean you have control and that you get to decide every outcome for you and others. You have no control over circumstances. You never have and never will.
Instead, you have agency, ownership, and responsibility, which gives you the freedom to respond to and create your experience of reality. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate how this works in real life.
Example 1: Let’s say your adult child quits their job and decides to stay home and play guitar for a few months. (This scenario assumes no severe mental illness or addiction.) A controlling response might involve calling every day, projecting fear about their finances, pushing for information about their job search, and expressing distrust and disappointment in their choices. Feeling like you are in control might help you cope. Wine or ice cream might help you cope. You‘ll still be stressed, and your child will be annoyed with you at best.
When you create, your response might look like this: This is your child’s life. You can be grateful that they know themselves and their needs enough to take a break or make a change. If you have feelings about the situation, they are valid. Those feelings are yours to process on your own through journaling, workshops, in therapy, or with friends or trusted advisors. Your child’s decision opens doors for you to let go of control even more, focus on your life, and build trust with your child as you support them without judgment. You get to continue to enjoy your life. As you project faith in your child and their future, your relationship with your child becomes stronger.
In this example, the circumstances are the same. Your child decided to quit. The outcomes are entirely different because of the choices you make to create your reality.
Example 2: Someone you love develops dementia. No amount of journaling or meditation is going to make this situation ok. It’s terrible to see someone you love decline. You can’t pretty this situation up with positive thinking. Still, you can create.
Controlling might look like resistance, a refusal to accept the situation, behaving as if everything is as it has always been or fighting reality with everything you’ve got.
When you create, you become conscious and intentional. You feel your feelings. You grieve your loss of relationship, identity, and companionship. You care for yourself with movement, sleep, nutritious food, and time with friends and family. You know when you need rest or time alone. You get yourself outside for walks. You know when it’s time to advocate with your doctor. You make intentional decisions to change your living arrangement, notify friends, and get help on a timeline that works for you. You seek support from people going through the same thing. Slowly, you accept, and through acceptance, create a new reality of what it means to love someone with dementia, to care for yourself and your own life, to nourish friendships and family relationships, to be grateful for the time you have, and to develop a new community of people who get it.
Coping is like a Band-Aid. You plaster it over the stress to help you “feel better.” Creating is letting life unfold organically while you stay conscious, intentional, and grateful. Creating involves all your emotions, the good, bad, and ugly. Rather than a distinct set of coping strategies, creating is a complete way of being. It is a lifestyle that allows you to make choices, feel them, and make new ones as life unfolds in wonderful and challenging ways. Life happens for you. You are in the driver’s seat with everything you need to grow, evolve, and live.
Christina Boyd-Smith, PhD teaches you to craft life with strategies grounded in daily reality. In addition to being the Corporate Rebel Coach, she is accredited by the International Coach Federation, works with clients 1:1, in groups, and is a speaker and author. With her no-nonsense and spirited style, she helps leaders and teams in business, non-profit, and educational organizations worldwide. Christina is a Returned Peace Corps volunteer from Pakistan and Nepal, a Moth storyteller, and makes a wonderful peach pie. More info and contact information at: thecorporaterebel.com.
