Being settled is a feeling, not a circumstance.
Several years ago I was living in a condo in Chicago with my family. My husband and I both worked outside of the home. Our children commuted eight miles to the south side for school. My husband was often traveling. We spent the weekdays working and the weekends getting out of the apartment as much as possible. We were hustling and bustling.
And the whole time, I was waiting to be settled one day.
Specifically, I was waiting to have a neighborhood community. Our condo building was wonderful but full of empty-nesters or young families who moved out when their kids reached kindergarten.
I was also waiting for our ‘forever home’. We had bought our condo when our oldest was nine months old because it was the best we found in a convenient location to get to work.
At the time I thought my circumstance of not being settled was real. I truly believed it and so it became my reality. We didn’t engage much with our neighbors, convinced that they would eventually move. We discussed renovating the condo endlessly but never took any action. “Why bother? Probably not worth it” we thought. And as a I have mentioned before, I searched and searched Chicago for a more suitable home.
Then the pandemic came. And, as I like to say, we were free agents when it hit. The suburbs bid and won. (How that happened is another story.) We decided to settle in a town thirty miles north of Chicago. Yes, settle.
But months after the move, I was not able to say “I am settled” to myself. I had hesitations about the school my children were enrolled in; I had no visibility into what high school they would go to; our house was full of the strange furniture the sellers had left; and while we had neighbors who had lived in their homes for many many years, we didn’t know any of them yet.
I had drastically changed our family’s circumstance in order to settle but I wasn’t settled.
And why? Because being settled wasn’t a situation. It was a feeling. For me it was a combination of security, belonging, and comfort in seeing my future clearly laid out in front of me.
As it turns out, those feelings come from how we perceive our situation, not the situation itself.
“Want to feel settled? Feel settled.” was the message from the universe. So I worked with my life coach and my therapist. I also started with a very simple Martha Beck exercise that I call Get What You Want. I spent ten minutes a day imagining and feeling all the scenarios that would bring me the feelings I wanted. I was diligent. I set a timer and sat down with a cup of coffee and methodically did a mental walk through of what I would experience if I had security, if I had a sense of belonging and if felt the comfort of everything being ok. After a couple of weeks I noticed I felt different. I was calmer. After a month, I was excited about our new life. I started to believe in my bones that we were settled.
I still don’t know what the future holds. But whenever I want something badly I go to this exercise over and over again. It always brings me exactly what I want. And that helps me return to trusting that whatever happens will be benign, friendly, and will be for me not against me.
Hello, I’m Serena. I am a life coach and I write about discovering your calling and creating your right life.
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If you are curious about the exercise I mentioned in this post, I’ve created an easy to use worksheet. Email me at serena@applesinaseed.co to receive it.
