Butterfly - Integration
Dear Friend,
There is a model I learned years ago in my training as a life coach that I still use all the time, both with my clients and in my own life. It’s called the Change Cycle. It uses the life cycle of a butterfly to describe the way human beings move through change.
The first stage is the chrysalis.
This is the part nobody particularly enjoys.
The caterpillar enters the chrysalis and, quite literally, begins to dissolve. Its old form breaks down before the new one has taken shape. In the Change Cycle, this is Square One.
Square One can occur in any area of our life when a change happens. Whether it’s something we consider “good,” like a promotion, or “bad,” like losing someone we love, a change will catapult us into a new way of being. It’s disorienting. The life or identity we knew has ended, and we don’t yet know what will replace it.
The motto we use for Square One is: “I don’t know what the hell is going on, and that’s okay.”
We cannot know what we are becoming. We simply trust and take great care of ourselves, knowing that this too shall pass.
Then comes Square Two.
In Square Two, the being we are becoming starts to form. Something begins to take shape. We are inspired to change something: our hair, our clothes, our living room. We start noticing things we didn’t notice before. Has that tree always been that beautiful?
We dream. We begin to make plans. We get glimpses of a life that doesn’t exist yet and ask, What if?
Square Three is where things get real.
The butterfly has formed, but now it has to get itself out of the chrysalis. There is effort here. Work. Trial and error. Its wings are wet. It’s vulnerable.
This is the stage when we are actually building the new life, learning the new skill, creating the business, changing the relationship, practicing the boundary, becoming the person we imagined back in Square Two.
The motto for Square Three is: “This is harder than I thought it would be, and that’s okay.”
And then there is Square Four.
The butterfly flies.
This is the part I want to talk about this week.
Because I think many of us might be skipping over Square Four.
We accomplish the thing. We make the change. We survive the hard season. We learn the lesson. Something that once required enormous courage becomes something we simply do.
And then we move the goalpost.
Instead of looking around and thinking, Holy shit. I did it, we notice the next thing that needs attention.
There is always something, after all.
Another dream. Another problem. Another part of ourselves we want to heal. Another way we could improve our work, our relationships, our bodies, our homes, our finances, our spiritual lives.
Growth can become such a habit that we forget there is supposed to be a part of the cycle where we get to be the butterfly.
Where we flutter.
Where we inhabit the life we worked so hard to create.
Where we allow what was once new and terrifying to become ours.
This is integration.
And sometimes integration is so subtle that we don’t even recognize it as transformation.
Integration is the part where we stop practicing the new way of being and realize that, somewhere along the way, it became who we are. We no longer have to try so hard to be brave, or boundaried, or independent, or creative, or whatever this particular transformation asked of us. We have lived it long enough that it has begun to belong to us.
Think about something you can do easily now that once terrified you.
Think about a situation you would handle completely differently today than you would have five years ago.
Think about something you once desperately wanted that is now so normal that you complain about it.
Think about the version of you who didn’t yet know what you know now.
She worked really hard to get you here.
And maybe, before we ask her to start another transformation, we could let her enjoy this one.
A Butterfly Practice
Sometime this week, I invite you to resist the temptation to ask yourself what comes next.
Instead, look backward.
Choose one area of your life and remember where you were when this particular change began.
Maybe you were in the goo.
Maybe something had fallen apart and you had absolutely no idea what you were going to do.
Remember what you dreamed about when possibility finally began to return.
Remember what you had to learn, practice, risk, leave, begin, or do differently to get here.
And then come all the way back to today.
What is ordinary for you now that once seemed impossible?
Don’t answer too quickly.
Let yourself actually feel the distance between that version of you and this one.
There will be another chrysalis. That’s the nature of being alive. We will keep changing, dreaming, growing, and beginning again.
But we don’t have to rush there.
This week, Butterfly asks you to stay in Square Four for a little while.
Enjoy what you know.
Enjoy what you built.
Enjoy who you’ve become.
You worked hard for these wings.
Look again. You have them.
With love,
Carrie
