Change With Me

“The gift of change is that it exposes everything that’s going on beneath the surface.” – Lola Wright

Do you know what you need to thrive during change? No matter how much joy change can bring in your life, there will always be some discomfort. It’s up to you to determine how to make inevitable change work for you.

I live by a principle that I learned in volleyball: keep your knees loose and move your hips. You never know when a ball is going to be hit your way, and you have to be ready to respond with purpose.

On this episode of Find Your Fierce & Loving, I reflect on the process of moving into the new Logan Square space. When I found an environment lacking in joy and beauty, I had to figure out how to make my new surroundings work for me. Listen in to hear about how our greatest challenges may be our most powerful opportunities.

• (02:03) – The discomfort of change
• (06:20) – Taking back control
• (10:42) – Possibility of scarier change
• (15:32) – What the future holds

Do you want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created? We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle, a vibrant membership community rich in opportunities for engagement and transformation. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle.

You can follow Lola Wright, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com.

Chicago born and built, Lola grew up in wealth and privilege, yet always sensed something was missing. She sought out aliveness and freedom in music, immersing herself in the hip hop and house music scenes of 90s Chicago. After finding herself on her own at 23, as the mother of two young children, she became determined to create a new experience.

Lola is an ordained minister with a gift for weaving together the mystical and material, she served for many years as the CEO of Bodhi Center, an organization committed to personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community-building. 

This podcast is produced by Quinn Rose with theme music by independent producer Trey Royal.

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Lola Wright (00:01): Something is stirring. Maybe you’ve felt it. We are reckoning with the reality of injustice and binary thinking that feeds the political machine. Humanity is in the midst of a heartbreaking and painful paradigm shift. That is a good thing. My name is Lola Wright, and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is intended to help you disrupt, untangle, and free your mind of personal and collective agreements, patterns and beliefs that are holding you back and weighing you down. We desperately need your fierce and loving purpose, now more than ever.

Lola Wright (00:54): I am so excited to join you, as I am every week really. I think I say some version of that every week we gather… “I’m so excited.” I think part of that is really just a choice. It’s really just about choosing a disposition of enthusiasm, expectancy, and excitement that is unconditional, not dependent on conditions. What would it be like to actually choose, cause, create a way of being that was not circumstantially oriented? That is a completely radical idea. I think part of the reason I live with a kind of reliable enthusiasm and excitement is I am a bit of a change junkie. To know me is to know that I see change like an adventure. When Nathan introduced me to this idea of this new space in Logan Square, I had a little bit of resistance, and it was mainly like, “Ugh gosh. One more thing to take care of.”

Lola Wright (02:00): But, in pretty short order, I got on board. Now, what comes with change is some level of discomfort. So, I want to talk a little bit about what the discomfort I have been moving through in this new iteration of change in our lives. Because the thing is, even if you get to the point where change is fun and playful and adventuresome and is riddled with expectancy and enthusiasm and excitement, that does not mean it is always easy. It does not mean that it is always comfortable. In fact, change isn’t comfortable. But, remember the opportunity is to become more comfortable with discomfort. And as you know, I am always inviting us into this idea of loose knees and move your hips. I was a volleyball player in grade school and in high school. And, if you’ve ever played volleyball, you know that that is the stance you take when you’re awaiting something that is coming your way called a ball.

Lola Wright (03:10): If a ball is coming your way, and you’re on the other side of the net, you want to have loose knees, and you’re moving your hips. There’s a kind of availability and receptivity. You’re readying yourself for the next opportunity. What a great metaphor for life. Are you readying yourself for the next opportunity? The more agile, flexible, available, fluid, receptive we can be, the more graceful change can occur. So, the change that I’ve been navigating is a change of pattern, a change of practice, a change of location. When we started showing up at Logan Square four months ago, it began as an adventure. It was like “Wow, something new.” That kind of honeymoon phase that you might experience in a relationship or a job, anything, right? It’s like you say yes to something new, and there’s a period of seeming bliss oftentimes that follows that.

Lola Wright (04:09): And then, it can start to wane. That’s what happened to me. We started showing up to this Logan Square location in late March, early April. And, at first it was like, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t been going really anywhere over the last 15 months or at that point I guess 12, 13 months. This is fun. It’s fun to go somewhere new. It’s fun to take on a new project, a new adventure.” And then, about eight to 10, 12 weeks and I’m like, “This is not fun. I’m not having fun.” And to know me is to know that fun has a very high value in my world. It’s like fairly essential. My two sort of guiding values I’ve come to understand about myself are joy and beauty. And, I was not experiencing either of those qualities in a reliable way. This project that we had taken on started to become my project.

Lola Wright (05:07): Nathan was still happily working in the attic of our home with his habits and his routines firmly and steadily in place. The adventure that I had embarked on that I thought we were embarking on became my adventure alone in this dirty, dusty, relatively unfinished space that had been neglected for quite some time. There I was leading a new team in an industry I knew almost nothing about and an environment that didn’t feel ideal for me. The honeymoon had worn off. The hit that I got from the excitement and the enthusiasm of change was no longer there. Routine, the mundane, monotony had set in, and I was feeling restless. So, I want to just sort of pay attention to the arc or the roller coaster of change. When we are saying yes to something new it can feel exciting at the onset, and then it can start to get old and tweaking might be involved.

Lola Wright (06:21): So, I began to get curious, like, “How can I continue to create the reality that I desire? How can I take responsibility for what I’m actually wanting?” First thing was I needed to get in communication with Nathan. We were doing this as a partnership. We were doing this together, and somehow I was starting to suffer through this change. And so, I said to him, “Hey, I’m just really clear that I want to do this with you, and I feel like I’m doing this alone. This change of lifestyle, of pattern, of behavior, of pursuit is no longer feeling great. It’s feeling a little isolating and lonely. I actually am starting to feel like I have a job.” And, to know me is to know that the last thing I want on the planet is a job. Lola Wright does not do jobs. Lola Wright does purpose, passion, dharma, what moves me.

Lola Wright (07:19): And, that doesn’t mean it always has to be like hot and sexy and fun and tantalizing, exciting, but it does have to be purposeful, and it was starting to feel without purpose. So, I took responsibility. I got in communication with the person who was on this ride with me, and I said, “Look, I want to do this with you. I don’t want to do this alone. And, here’s what I’ve come to understand about myself. The two organizing values that are essential for me are joy and beauty, and this environment is lacking joy and beauty. I’m having to generate too much of it on my own, and I don’t want to do that this way. So, I’d love to see how you can partner with me to create this environment in a way that supports the things that matter to me.

Lola Wright (08:05): And, I’d be curious to know what do you need to have in this environment that supports you?” What supports me, what I love, what I value joy and beauty are not necessarily the same values that move or mobilize Nathan. Nathan can work in a hole. He does not need a beautiful environment. He needs quiet. He needs focus. He needs routine, and that’s fine. But, together if we’re doing this thing as a partnership, we have to tune into what we each need. I guess that would be my question for you is, “Do you know what you need to thrive?” As you’re saying yes to the shifts and the changes, the transitions and transformations in your life, are you dialing in and noticing what is most aligned for you? Not because you’re fragile. Not because you’re a baby. Not because you’re a pre-Madonna, but because you get to create this existence in a way that works for you.

Lola Wright (09:06): If you don’t create this reality, this existence, this life in a way that works for you, who will? It will take on a kind of inertia, and it’ll just sort of be like a default status quo existence. You’re not here for that. One of the things I’ve said in this podcast is set fire to the box you’ve been living in and watch it burn. When we get stuck in our patterns and our practices, and we go unconscious very little is available. And, that is why I love change. When you and I mix it up and try something new, all kinds of other options become available. I didn’t actually really know that I valued joy and beauty as essentially as I do. That was really great awareness for me.

Lola Wright (09:58): You want to be more alive. You want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created. We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle. This is an affirming and radical space that will gather weekly, on-demand or live, whatever works best for your life. For more information on how you can engage in Our Circle, visit lolawright.com/our-circle. I’d love to have you with us.

Lola Wright (10:43): So, Nathan and I partnered in this creation and said, “What do we each need for this place to really work for us?” And, we started imagining what it could be like as a kind of live work studio. Maybe it’s time for us to move on from our Oak Park home. And, that started to feel really scary. We were considering another layer, another level of change. I moved to Oak Park when I was a young single mom with two kids. I moved here after moving 11 times in seven years. We were always looking for a cheaper, bigger place that could create a lifestyle for my kids I so desperately wanted for them. When we moved to Oak Park, there was a kind of stability that I found in this community. As a white mother of mixed race Black children in the city of Chicago that is deeply segregated, I was looking for a community that was representative of the world I wanted to create with my kids.

Lola Wright (11:45): Not because Oak Park is utopian. Let me tell you it is not, but it is acknowledged because of lots of organizer’s efforts to be one of the most diverse communities in the country. Not just racially, but economically from a real estate perspective. This is an incredible community that I have had the privilege of raising my children in. So, here we found ourselves in Oak Park and now 17 years later I’m thinking about leaving my nest and creating this live work space in Logan Square. I started to feel destabilized, and it opened up all of my attachments. What does my home in Oak Park represent? And, I want you to listen to this and map it onto your own life. For me, my home in Oak Park was like I had outsourced some level of my safety and security to the house itself.

Lola Wright (12:46): I have always said I will die in this house and now all of a sudden a plot twist in my own life as a woman who firmly believes you have an incredible capacity to create the life you desire, a plot twist I didn’t see coming. How available are we to those plot twists? How available are we to change? What does change bring up to the surface that needs and wants to be explored, dealt with? I began to feel waves of grief around losing this home that has provided so much. And, you might say to yourself, “Waves of grief?” Yes. Your home has the potential to be a kind of sanctuary, and that’s what this place has been for me. The lifestyle, the life, the peace, the stability I didn’t know would ever be possible at one point. I didn’t know if I’d be able to deliver that to my kids, and we did.

Lola Wright (13:54): You’ve heard me talk about walking through this home in different iterations of it. And, at one point this basement that I’m now standing in that’s beautifully furnished and finished was dusty, dank, dark. I had a visceral experience walking through with a basket of laundry one day in this dusty, dank, dark basement, and I just started weeping. I never imagined a life that would include a basement. You might think, “What?” I was raised with basements. They weren’t a novel concept. But, my life had become so challenging. Life felt so serious and hard. And all of a sudden, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this dark, dusty, dank basement. I had a basement. I had a home. I had a safe and peaceful place to rest my head. I’m saying yes to this new vision, this new possibility of a live work studio space in this Logan Square magical garden was uprooting my safety, my security that I found in this house.

Lola Wright (15:20): I can also be pretty sentimental. And, I started to feel grief in taking this special nest away from my kids. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how this story or this chapter rather is going to be written. Whether we move or we don’t move is almost not the point. This change revealed all kinds of opportunity for me. When you and I stay safe, when we play small, we delay our growth. We dampen our aliveness. Saying yes to things that take you beyond your comfort zone means getting out on the skinny branches as I often say. Taking on this kind of expansion that is unnerving at times. And, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Change will bring to the foreground all of the stuff that you likely didn’t know even existed in you.

Lola Wright (16:43): So, I’ve just been breathing with that. I’ve been feeling my feelings as a wave of grief around leaving this house comes up. I allow the tears to flow. You and I can hold two distinct experiences simultaneously. I can feel my heartbreak. I can feel my grief while feeling my joy, my enthusiasm, my excitement. Remember, any time we dampen one aspect of ourselves, we actually dampen our entire experience of life. So, if I have a set point for joy, if I have a set point for sadness, if I have a set point for anger, and I only allow myself to feel just a bit of sadness, just a little bit of anger, just a little bit of joy, I rob myself of the range of my experience. The gift of change is it exposes everything that’s going on beneath the surface. It reveals your belief structure. It can expose your limiting beliefs. It can underscore your attachments.

Lola Wright (18:02): It makes sense to me why people don’t do change. It makes perfect sense to me why we stay safe. Who really knows how to feel our full humanity, our full aliveness? But, if you just begin where you are, notice in your life if there are any places or spaces that you have over architected that you manage and fix and control to stay safe, would you be willing to unravel a little bit? Would you be willing to upset your own apple cart? Would you be willing to disrupt some of your patterns? This is what I love about travel. Whenever I travel, I begin to sort of reorganize my neural pathways. I begin to see the world a little differently. I begin to open up my imagination and creativity. You and I can do that in micro opportunities every single day.

Lola Wright (19:06): Walk to the train differently than you did yesterday. Take a different route to the grocery store. There are all these ways to sort of unearth our habits in ways that are useful, healthy, productive, create greater exploration, inquiry. Change is destabilizing and that doesn’t make it bad. So, here I am on the path with you saying yes to my own expansion, moving through the sort of waters that feel a little choppy at times. The waters of change. Noticing my desire to stay in my sort of small and safe and known and familiar existence, experience. But, when we talk about expanding our container for good, when we talk about allowing ourselves to open up to greater possibility, it does involve destabilization. So, how can you do that in a loving and graceful way? How can you breathe through that? The best way to move through change is to feel your feelings along the way. Breathe. Breathe. Have possibility partners that can talk you through it, be with you, bear witness.

Lola Wright (20:36): Change is good. Destabilization can be really valuable. Of course, there are always those areas of life that we don’t know how to sit still. We can almost welcome an unnecessary level of change because we have lots of patterns of chaos perhaps in our family system. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m asking you to look at the areas of life that you keep small to stay safe. My home is not the source of my safety and security. My home is not my children’s source of safety, security, stability. That now lives in my body. It lives in their body.

Lola Wright (21:20): Their experience of love and peace and connection occurs wherever we are. And, we get to take that on to this next leg of the journey. So, be mindful of the areas of life that you’re controlling, that you’re keeping small and consider joining me on the skinny branches as we navigate this choppy water, whatever metaphor you’ll want to use. You and I are here to be expansive and alive. And, one of the best ways we can explore that is through noticing our patterns of control. Change will disrupt your sense of safety and security, control and approval. But, that doesn’t mean you’re off track.

Lola Wright (22:16):  If you enjoyed this show and would like to receive new episodes as they’re published, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. Your review helps others find this show. You can follow me at Lola P. Wright on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and learn more about my work at lolawright.com. This episode was produced by Quinn Rose with theme music from independent music producer, Trey Royal. 

Lola Wright (23:02): And, that doesn’t mean it always has to be hot and sexy and fun and tantalizing, exciting, but it does have to be purposeful.