On the Edge
There’s a drama exercise called ‘Headings’ – people create a frozen image response to a series of words or short phrases. A phrase I have often used is “on the edge”, it can be used literally or metaphorically; someone on the edge of losing their mind, or clinging onto the edge of a cliff or poised on the edge of anticipation. It’s a phrase that describes a period of my life when I was stuck in a familiar pattern and knew I needed a change, but everything I thought of felt like flinging myself off the top of the cliff and I simply couldn’t do it.
Every time I started to believe I could take the leap, something held me back. I identified strongly with a life-long narrative of being responsible and reliable, and taking a leap towards something different felt like a challenge to that identity, something so shocking that to imagine living without it felt like a little death. It wasn’t that there was even something concrete I was trying to get away from or change, just the sense that I was stuck in a familiar groove listening only to the demands and expectations I was used to putting on myself, not hearing the deeper voice of my longings and a sense of possibility.
What finally pushed me to make the leap was a short illness that showed me how absurdly my sense of over-responsibility was running my life. I was teaching in a university at the time and had regular headaches and bouts of dizziness. One afternoon I felt too dizzy to stand up and teach, so told the students not to worry, but I was going to teach the class lying down. They were of course concerned but the lesson continued. It was one of several wake-up calls that made it very clear to me I needed to leave my job (which I loved) and find a different way of working. I hovered on the edge of change for months, until, in a moment of clarity, I used the creative tools I had been teaching for years; I imagined someone else making the leap and telling me about it. A simple shift from myself as centre stage to observing in the wings, a shift that allowed me to make the leap without actually doing it!
It’s so blindingly obvious to me now that I’m still a bit embarrassed it took me so long to work out.
Being stuck in a rut is never a positive experience, but there is comfort in the familiarity it offers. Over the years I have regularly put my energy into justifying why I should stay with the familiar and avoid taking leaps into the unknown. Once I noticed I was standing on an edge, there were only two options; turn back, or step over it. What helped me step over the edge was drawing on something different than my usual thinking process. I used the creative, non-logical part of my brain and found that getting an imaginary character to take the risks and show me what they found, gave me a new perspective and created a path for me to follow. Imagining doing something literally wires the new behaviour into the range of possibilities for future action, it's incredible how imagining something can affect us.
If you are interested in knowing the science behind this, listen to Emily Holmes on A Life Scientific talking about why images are more powerful than words in shaping how we think and feel.
I developed An Inside Story technique as a guide for those moments when you know something needs to be different but can’t work out what it is or how to get there and want some help to imagine something new.