Embracing change: a leap of faith

Three years ago, I wrote an article about transformational change and about a cat called Nessie who had a condition similar to metathesiophobia, meaning an intense and exaggerated fear of change. It was not a sentimental article about a pet cat: I have a deep distaste of anthropomorphising non-human animals. It was an allegory to illustrate how we can overcome the fear of great change and choose a different outcome that will bring us growth and some very exciting adventures!

Nessie is a beautiful and highly sensitive cat. She lives with Louis and Abbi, my son and daughter-in-law, and, 3 years ago, her home was in London, UK. Nessie was specifically bred to be an indoor cat, so her instinctual wildness was curbed, and her horizons were inevitably small and contained. She was also a lockdown cat, born in March 2020, and like many human babies born in that time, her formative circle of trust was confined to those in the same household. As such, she was very timid of strangers and the unknown.

And then her world turned upside down. Louis and Abbi were embarking on an exciting new life in Manhattan and of course Nessie was going too. There was to be a 12-day interlude with Louis and Abbi flying out to NYC first and Nessie staying with me before AirCare came to fly her across the pond. Despite the loving care in her trip across London to me, Nessie arrived traumatised. She scuttled under the guest bed in the study, squashed into a tiny space between the far wall and the radiator, her head propped onto the radiator valve…and would not move for 3 days! I understand cats and how to move homes with them, but this cat’s terror was very new, and I was at a loss. For the first two nights, I slept in the study bed, handfeeding her food and water in the gap between the bed and the wall, talking to her and trying to reach down to stroke and comfort her.

Nessie is a very affectionate cat and by the second day she was purring and trying to turn upside down for her tummy to be tickled. How quickly she had found a new…albeit a very uncomfortable and even smaller…comfort zone!

So, there we were, both trapped. I called Abbi and asked for help, and she told me to be bold and lift Nessie out. I did, held this terrified and writhing cat firmly in my arms and talked gently to her. I told her she had a choice: she could either stay stuck in her excruciatingly tight and very lonely cave, or she could take a leap of faith and begin to explore this exciting new territory. Staying stuck in fear is not what animals are born to do, and she needed to reconnect to her feline instincts i.e., to hunt!

What helps us move from a frozen huddled place to one of growth and embracing the unknown? As homo sapiens we are brilliantly designed, physiologically and psychologically, to respond fast to danger. It is pure survival instinct, and we do this by diverting all energy from where it’s not urgently needed and channelling it to react to the sabre-toothed tiger bearing down on us. This includes switching from our natural abdomen breathing to a shallow upper chest breathing, and it also includes conserving our emotional energy: pausing to figure out how we feel about the imminent threat is not wise when we’re about to be eaten up! We are designed to be in fight/flight response for an intense sprint of energy.

The problem is we can get stuck there: our imaginative brain…the blessing and the curse of being human… overrides our instinctual body and we catastrophise i.e. we imagine the worst outcome. We might not have the extreme condition of metathesiophobia, but we can be stubbornly stuck in a fixed mindset, fiercely resisting any change, and telling ourselves that our current situation is better, however dreadful, than anything new and different.

This exaggerated fear of the unknown is about control: clinging anxiously to what we think we can control and fiercely fighting what we can’t. It is also about ego, an arrogance that we know best and our way is the only way, and a refusal to let go and consider other ways of being, thinking or feeling that are experienced as very threatening but might actually be much healthier for us. The sad irony is that those who are most resistant to real change are inevitably changing in themselves. Their minds and hearts contract and they become mean and cynical, blaming everyone else, stuck in a victim mindset.

No-one likes inner transformational change. Even professional change agents like me are nervous because we know it always involves a loss, a letting go essentially of our ego and control. If someone says, smugly, they love and are great with change, it’s generally because they are thinking of change they can control, what I call ‘pick and mix change’. Real change forces us to let go of what we might want but no longer need and it can be very scary and painful. But it also brings the invitation to grow and evolve. And, as I told Nessie, there is always a ‘free will’ choice and no-one can force us to make that choice: do I resist and hold tightly to my old, fixed mindset and behaviours, caught in the victim loop, and feeling increasingly bitter and helpless? Or do I take a deep breath and take that leap of faith?

Even if we’re at the point of knowing this is the right and healthy choice, what helps us make that ‘red pill’ leap? What helps me is knowing and trusting the process and this starts with pausing and going into my stillness. Into that ‘space between/fertile void' where I can connect to the crucial skill of ‘detached involvement’ and really open myself up to a different way of being and doing.

Look at the ‘Inner Transformational Change’ process below. The first two stages are about deep observation and reflection and we can only do this when we unhook from the noise and 'busy fool syndrome' and go deep into our stillness. This is the essential precursor to the capacity to learn and evolve, i.e. really change:

  1.      We observe the world around us, seeing with an open, non-judgmental eye. I can always tell the babies that have this: there’s a deeply, intense curiosity in their gaze.

2.     We then bring inwards what we have witnessed, again without judgement, and allow the necessary time to digest this new data.

3.     The next stage is ‘Sense-making’. This is the sifting and filtering process and the first time we use our IQ. Up to this point we have been using our intuitive, instinctual and emotional intelligences. It is at this stage we understand if we have outmoded mindsets and behaviours that are no longer serving us and that it is time to do/be different.

4.     The fourth stage is crucial: we can have all the understanding and good intentions but if we don’t take action, it is all wasted, hot air.

So, what happened to Nessie? She made the leap out of her hiding hole and within another day, she was enjoying the run of the place and then, just as she had fully relaxed into her new home, it was time for Aircare to collect her for her next challenge. My dread of a horrible, panicky ending didn’t materialise. It was a relatively smooth and gentle transition. Nessie had overcome her petrifying terror and learned to trust that change might be a scary, yes, but not everything unknown and new is a life-threatening sabre-toothed tiger!

Nessie on arrival at the Manhattan apartment: I’m not in Kansas anymore!

Reunited with her human family, Nessie could have easily reverted to her huddled behaviour. With a much more interesting view, yes, but no other change. But life had other plans for Nessie. Within a year, a sabre toothed tiger in the form of very lively kitten, Hudsy, joined the family. Nessie reacted again in terror but her need for affection was greater than her fear of the different. She watched Hudsy the kitten with the humans and she learned new behaviours from him. And then, a year ago, the real catalyst arrived in the form of a human baby, my granddaughter.

We can make great external changes, including crossing continents but nothing really changes within us unless we are open to it. We all expected Nessie to remain aloof and terrified. To our great surprise, she changed, really changed. Slowly and very cautiously over the next few months she became much more relaxed and open to this strange new creature who had supplanted her humans’ focus and love. It was instinctual survival and her huge need for affection, yes, but she chose to overcome her darker instincts that would have resulted in a very different outcome. Nessie and baby Marnie are now inseparable.

And so, the story evolves: on Thursday Nessie will be returning with Hudsy and their humans to live in London again. Louis will continue running the New York office and will be opening a London office too.

As I wrote in my last article: 

‘The poignant truth is we can never really return home. We might physically go back to our original home, but, if we have been genuinely open to embracing the new land/s and people, we are not the same person who left. Like Odysseus, our many adventures will have radically changed us. We have gone through many abyss and revelatory experiences, and seen too much, both in the new land and also from a distant and different perspective of our homeland. We can never unsee.’ Expanding our horizons leaving home to come home

And this is why I wrote Nessie’s story. If a cat, who does not have the mind capable of the inner transformational change process, but can still profoundly change in herself, what does that say to us about our extraordinary human mind and capacity to change? We all get caught in reasons why we can’t become the person we know we were born to be, our Authentic and best Self. Surely it’s time to let go of all those soul-destroying, self-limiting beliefs, take a deep breath…and leap!

Hannah Elizabeth Greenwood