The Art Of The Flying Trapeze: Letting Go Of Old Ideas To Embrace New Ones

 

We live life like a trapeze artist swings on a flying trapeze. As much as the trapeze artist swings to the next trapeze when the time is right, we too have to learn how to let go of old ideas that are not working for us anymore and embrace new ones that might define our future for us. It may seem discomfiting to think about letting go of the familiar, but it’s often the only way forward. It’s the only way to stop being stuck in your career, in your business and in your life. Join Rebecca Victor in this episode and be imbibed with courage and trust yourself enough to see the next trapeze and catch it when the timing is right.

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The Art Of The Flying Trapeze: Letting Go Of Old Ideas To Embrace New Ones

I’m happy that you’re here with me now. I wanted to share with you the art of the flying trapeze. That sounds ridiculous because I’ve never been on a physical trapeze. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what they have to do in order to move from one bar through the air to catch another one. When I look at that action, it represents much for me, what it means to move through life and letting go of old ideas of where I’m now at that no longer serve me to embrace new ideas and learn how to live with those new ideas in ways that I’d never considered before. They’re not part of my consciousness, my conscious understanding. I love this idea of holding onto the bar that a trapeze artist does.

They hold onto the one bar and as they’re looking out to make their way to the other bar, they jump up and then they start swinging back and forth. They haven’t let go of the bar. They can easily go right back up and stand on that platform. No one under that bar. What they’re doing is they’re jumping off and they’re swinging back and forth to build momentum and also make sure that they’re aligned so that when they move through the air, they’re ready to catch the bar on the other side. They’ve done the work that has enabled them to trust the process, to trust themselves in the process and to match up with the bar that they are reaching to catch.

It’s like a journey. We’re perpetually moving from one trapeze to the next to the next. I know for myself in my journey. I have a feeling that all of us on our journeys have moments where we are moving through discontent, moments where we’re working through life is not working for us the way we’re living it at this time. This time that we’re all in is a time where many of us are feeling like life is not working right now. Everything that we’ve come to understand or know, if not everything, many things that we’ve come to learn to know is changing and shifting. We don’t know what to do.

Almost like we’re in this stasis of non-movement because we are like that trapeze artist holding onto that bar of the familiar, of what it is that we have practiced and known. Because of that, regardless of how it’s been for us, at least we know what to expect so we’re holding onto that bar. We’re not ready to take the leap. We’re not ready to swing back and forth to do any of that. We’re in a space now that we’re trying to figure out how do we balance and keep ourselves where we are when in fact, maybe where we are isn’t in the highest service to who we are.

The Old Mindset Holds Us Back

Have you ever been in a place where you’ve not been happy? You don’t quite know why but yet you think that something is wrong with you because you’re not happy. I’d like to introduce a new idea and it’s this, maybe that unhappiness or the discontent, rather than being a negative thing, it doesn’t feel good, mind you, but rather than it being something “wrong” maybe it is a stimulus. Maybe instead it is a stimulus that’s asking us, how do we want to grow next in our lives?

Maybe at one point, we’ve lived with this idea or this belief and we’re finding that’s not working anymore. Maybe it’s the belief that I have to work hard in order to get what I want. Maybe it’s the belief that in order to be successful, especially in business, I have to be somebody else. I can’t have emotions. I can’t engage the way I think I want to engage or maybe to be in a relationship. It means that I have to learn how to minimize what I want in service to another. Maybe it’s, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” That’s probably one of the most ridiculous statements I ever heard. I remember hearing it as a kid and I’m like, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Are you kidding me? Why are you going to have a cake then?” That’s cruel to even introduce that stuff to yourself if you can’t have it. It’s like, “Put it out there and you can’t have this but all it looks good.”

Those are mindsets that often many of us grow up with different flavors. It could be the mindset that, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Therefore, you can’t have what you want because it’s not available to you. That’s an old mindset. All of a sudden, there’s something itching inside that says, “Why can’t I have what I want? Why can’t I experience the relationship that’s meaningful to me? Why can’t I have the money to do the things that’s important to me? Why can’t I be in business, being who I am or whatever it is that we desire?” That question of why can’t, that sense of discontent rather than being negative is engaged as a stimulus.

Discontent is the initiator of moving into something better. Click To Tweet

What’s happening is that through this life journey, part of our process is to discover how cool we are, to discover that we have available to us a lot more than we may realize, that through history, we’ve learned to play small and that we’ve been taught how to play small with each generation. There are parts of generations that are going, “No.” The kids coming out, they’re like, “No.” For those of you who have children are watching and they’re not accepting a lot of what used to be accepted or maybe it wasn’t when you were growing up but you’ll learn how to squelch that. While your kids come in now, they’re not squelching. They’re like, “I don’t think so. Things are going to be different.”

That’s not a bad thing because these children are calling us to a greater understanding of who we are and learning to live from that. That is scary because we’ve held on like an artist on a trapeze. We’ve held onto the bar that says that we’re not enough. We’ve held onto the bar that says that we can’t accomplish what we want. We’ve held onto the bar that we’re not worth the risk. It’s too great of a risk. We’ve held onto the bar that there’s nothing there to support us. We’re out on our own. We’re by ourselves. We can’t trust. We’re out on our own when we’re wanting to create something and we feel that it’s not going to be available to support us.

There are all kinds of beliefs that we have that underlie our struggle to let go of these old ideas, to embrace something new. Part of the process of doing that, of realizing that we don’t have to hold onto these old ideas and that discontent is the initiator of our moving into something greater. The pain is because we’re holding on when we don’t belong there anymore. It’s like we’re the chick in the egg. We’re saying, “We need to stay in the egg because this is what we know.” We get bigger and bigger and bigger. That shell becomes more and more and more constructive until finally it’s like, “I’ve got to bust out of this or I’m going to turn inward and I don’t know what.”

Most chicks will peck their way out. Little by little, we’ll peck our way out. What does that mean as we peck our way out so that we can let go of and learn how to start moving out? We know we have a belief. We know that we don’t want to be where we’re at. At this point in time, we’re looking. We’re like, “God, I’m not happy here. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t even know if I can.” Part of the journey of turning inward starts to create space within you to ask the questions, “What’s this about? What is the gift here for me, especially when it’s hard for me to see a gift when it doesn’t feel good? What is it saying to me? What can I learn? How is this helping me? What is there for me? What’s a step that I can take?”

We start to question. As we start to question, as we are turning within and then rather than holding on, trying to figure out when it’s going to happen and when we’re going to get the answer, we let go and go about our day. That can be a hard thing to do. One of the things we can do is let go and go about our day. We become open to the way that life responds, the way that it says, “Here’s information that you’re seeking.” It comes in the form of you’re in a bookstore and a book falls at your feet. You’re like, “That’s an interesting topic.”

You’re looking at a row of books and they’re nothing but a big conglomeration of colors. All of a sudden, the words pop out on the spine of a book. You’re like, “Let me check that out,” or you’re driving. You get this urge to take a right instead of a left. You end up seeing something. That thing that you see shifts your life or you end up opening up a door. For some reason, you look into the eyes of a person that you’re opening the door for and you see those eyes and they’re smiling. There’s something that gets translated to you from that. It makes you smile.

All of a sudden that smiling opens you up. You overhear a conversation that someone’s saying it. It’s amazing how life responds to the things that we’re seeking. When we do that, we’re starting to jump up. It’s how they jump up and they start to swing. When we start to turn within and ask those questions of ourselves, it’s like we’re swinging. We’re swinging on that trapeze as we’re building our skills and our momentum. We’re learning to trust what it is to swing on this trapeze. We’re wanting to trust what it is to play with this new information we’re getting. We’re learning to trust beyond beliefs that have kept us stuck.

 

We engage. We learn. We find ourselves attracted to new information. For some of us, we find ourselves attracted to information. That’s taking us out of the comfort zone of what we’re used to reading or exploring. It takes us into learning new information that maybe 10 or 15 years earlier, we would be like, “I never listened to this information because we were taught that it wasn’t trustworthy.” Yet now fifteen years later, we’re curious about it. We start to judge. Maybe we’re wrong to be curious about this.

Moving Toward The Other Trapeze

One of the greatest gifts that we each have is that internal guidance within ourselves and that internal guidance knows us better than anybody else. That internal guidance has an awareness and a knowledge base that is for us if we’re willing to go quiet and pay attention to it and listen and open up. When I say, listen, it’s not just the ears. It’s feeling and sensing because that within us is that which is for our highest and best good. That is love. It’s not there to trick us. It’s not there to cause us to doubt ourselves. It’s there opening up.

It’s almost like when I’m teaching my children to ride their bike or even myself to ride a bike. I know how to ride a bike but my children are learning. How do they learn to trust the process of riding the bike when at times they’re going to fall on their keister, they’re going to get a skinned knee or a skinned hand? Maybe they won’t. Who knows? They’ll learn on their training wheels. At some point, they’ll say, “Take my training wheels off,” and off they go. When they first get on their bike to play on their bike, they don’t even know how to manage their weight balance. They don’t even know how to turn the wheels. They have to learn all that and then put the brakes on.

That’s like us when we’re starting into new ideas, the source that’s within us, that love that’s within us is like a parent watching you ride a bike or an adult. Some figure that’s supporting you as you ride a bike, they know what has to be done but the only person that can ride the bike for you is you. They’re not there wanting to knock you off your bike. They’re not there saying, “Let’s get on this bike. Let’s have fun. Let me push you over as you come by me.” That’s not what this internal guidance is.

It’s like, “Want a ride? We’re here.” When you fall over, that internal guidance is there. As you pick up, you wipe off, you cry and say, “That hurt like a son of a gun. Let’s try it again.” That’s that art of learning how to swing back and forth. As a trapeze artist is learning this art, they’re swinging back and forth. They’re experiencing the nature of what it is to move forward, to explore and experience what this movement is. This movement forward, this movement toward the other trapeze is. For us, that other trapeze that we’re moving toward is this new idea.

All of a sudden, we began to go, “Let me give myself permission to check this out.” If something doesn’t feel right, I can always go to what does feel right for me. That’s who I owe it to. I owe it to me to trust and do what feels right within me and know that for all of us, that is different. It is okay that it’s different. None of us are here to be a duplicate of the other. It’s going to be uniquely our journey. The gift is us trusting this process, like a person’s learning to trust their ability to sway back and forth on the trapeze.

Dare to trust what is inside you to lead you in creating a new idea, a new experience. Click To Tweet

There comes a point in time that they have to be able to see the trapeze on the other side before they can catch it. They’ve got to be able to see it. They’ve got to be able to see how it’s moving so that they can let go and grab it at the right time. For us, part of that process is realizing that beyond the discontent, there’s an awareness of something else that we desire. Something else that’s calling for us to explore, to open to, to create. We begin to play in the realm of what’s possible. We begin to explore what it is to be a co-creator in our lives, the creator of our lives. What is it to create this life we’ve come to do?

We have not been given all the tools that we need. We can start looking for those tools. We can start exploring those tools. The tools of belief they say, “There’s more possible for you than you may realize.” You have the gift of your imagination. You have the gift of your feelings. You have the gift of intuition to help guide and help serve you in creating your future. Instead of looking at your circumstances that say, you can only have this because this is the way it’s always been for you or for your family or for your neighbors for wherever you come from. You’re saying, “That may be because of what people have created before. I’m creating something different.”

I know part of that is learning to let go of those old ideas so I can allow myself to believe the possibilities for me and to create them inside of me. That’s where the power of paying attention to our feelings and our thoughts lie beginning to build within our mind, our own heart, our own sense of what it feels like to be what it is that we’re seeking to be long before it’s physical. We cannot move in the direction of the trapeze that we want to claim if we don’t know what it is. We’ve got to be able to identify for ourselves in some capacity that which we’re reaching for, what is it that we’re wanting to create?

We discover that which we’re reaching for is coming up from inside of us and all along we’re beginning to build that bridge to move us from where we’ve been to where we want to be. That bridge is that process. We get to discover the delights and the joys of all the pieces and components that are a part of that shift. It doesn’t come all at once. It comes in pieces. We get to experience the beauty of each one of those. They get to delight us and we get to discover the power that is within us, that we are not powerless, that we are not victims.

Although our experience in life may have shown us a different picture, we may have experienced something that’s caused us to believe that we can’t have what we want. If we want to hold onto that viewpoint, you can and you will experience that you can’t have what you want. If there’s something inside of you that’s saying, “The way things have been isn’t what I want. I want something different.” They’d begin to walk your journey of what that looks like as you begin to realize that you’re holding onto trapeze or beliefs that don’t work for you. You start to search for new ways. As your way now is starting to exercise and swing back and forth and develop your strength, your familiarity and your comfort level with, learning what it is to once you let go of that old belief to begin to take the shift, to move your body in midair, toward the new idea that you’re creating, the new experience.

That journey of creating your new experience means stepping out, daring to trust what inside you is leading you and let it show you the beauty available. Even when you look outside at the world and it feels like everything is falling apart, understand that the world is not creative. It is not. We create what we experience in the world. It is not a cause. It is a response. It has no active quality in it. It is a response. If we want to create something new and different then we get to learn how to do that.

Part of the tools that we’re going to work with is the tool of the heart, feelings, sensations, emotions, as well as the feeling of the imaginative tool of the mind. What does it look like to be in a place where I didn’t have to struggle financially anymore? What would it feel like? It would feel such a relief, what it would be to walk the world in that feeling of relief. Even though as I’m looking out in the world, there’s anything but that sense of relief. Am I willing to play the game and let myself learn like that trapeze artist, how to play this game, explore it, work with it, learn the skills?

 

It’s a skillset, learning to use your imagination and learning to trust something more than the old messages that you grew up with that keep you stuck. As you begin to be willing, “I’m willing. I want this. I don’t know how but I’m willing.” You start to create space to learn and you’re introduced to new ideas. All of a sudden, you find yourself. You’re in that mid-air space. As you’re in that mid-air space, you keep your eye on what you want. The trapeze artists know where that bar they’re reaching for is. It doesn’t matter if they’re spinning in midair or flipping sideways. They know where it is.

As you’re in that space, you’re aware, “I know that what I’m searching for is this. I’m searching for the feeling of peace. I’m searching for the feeling of abundance. I’m searching for that feeling and knowing. Not only searching but I’m starting to build that in my imagination by feeling, what does it feel like in my body to be peaceful? What does it feel like in my body to know that my well-being is taken care of? What does that feel like?” That’s the bar you’re going to be reaching for. It’s like we have a community that we’re growing together and we are leaving one way of engaging with one another to embrace something new.

The one way now served us at one time but it’s not serving us anymore as a community. We’re making this decision to shift. Part of the journey for us in this trapeze moment is to start to build what we want the bar to be like as we’re reaching for it. We’re creating that. Part of creating that means that we’re moving some of the fears, some of the doubts, some of the disbeliefs and move through them, let them come. Don’t hide them. Don’t pretend they’re not there. Let them be a gift and a tool that helps you to realize that you have the ability to shift those old beliefs that are no longer serving you.

You have the ability to hold on to them. It depends on what you want but as we’re letting go as a community, it is fun to watch what we are co-creating together, the vision of that bar that we’re reaching for. What’s happening is as we’re beginning to do that inside of ourselves, we’re like building this magnetism within us that said, this is what it’s going to feel like. This is what it feels like for us to do this. This is what it looks like in our minds. It’s like inside there’s this energy we’re building up almost as if we’re magnetizing our connection with that bar. There it is. We know what it looks like and we grab it.

We reach and we enjoy the experience, what it feels like to reach that, knowing that at some point we’re going to turn and there’s another bar we want to go for. During this time of change, as individuals and as a collective community, know that we’re in a great space to build something beautiful. In order to do that, part of it is being willing to let go of the ideas that say, we’re not able to do that. We have to create that something beautiful within ourselves so that it is grander than the belief that says we can’t do it.

It’s big that we want to be willing to look at that old belief and say, “I don’t want this anymore.” When you’re moving through times of change, especially now as we’re looking and we’re used to having looked at the world to identify for us what we want and it’s not there, the image that we’re searching for is not there. What we get the chance to do is start to create what we want to see from within first. We can be like those trapeze artists. We’re moving from a place now that’s no longer in service to who we are. We’re learning now how to build strength and how to learn the process of letting go of one bar, moving through the air to reach the other.

I’d like to know what your thoughts are on this movement. From one belief to another, to create something more beautiful, more special, more valuable to you. If you have questions, please feel free to write those in. We’re walking this together. The journey is looking different for all of us. Even if it’s different for all of us, we can honor and support that process as it looks for another while embracing and honoring and celebrating our own. Thank you for joining me. Have a great day and here’s to your life.