On Grasping and Letting Go
Transformation & the Search for Dharma
Hello, and welcome to Live Your Opus! Thank you for stopping by to read this week’s post. This week, I’m taking a different direction, sharing a bit about my personal transformation over the past few years to highlight how we tend to deal with change.
Most of us are dealing with change. When change hits and we’re not ready, we resist. When we stop resisting and lean into it, we engage with transformation and discover what’s possible—that’s the gift of transformation. So, come see what happens when grasping turns to growth.
If you’re a new subscriber or someone forwarded this post, welcome to the Live Your Opus family. I’m Janine Mathó, your Transformation Guide. I’m on a mission to empower and inspire high achievers like you everywhere with the tools and expert resources you need to raise the bar on your dreams, lives, and work and achieve more meaningful, sustainable outcomes faster.
Grasping
Grasping. Clinging. I was flailing about, searching for any bits of the self I knew to keep my identity intact. This is how my greatest personal transformation began: desperately seeking normal.
Two major life events collided–burnout and the sudden death of my mother–and suddenly, I was ripped out of life as I knew it.
The universe put me on this new path and said, "Walk."
I wanted to recover. But it only took a few days to realize that I’d rather not walk. ‘Flying would be a quicker way back to normal,’ I tried to reason.
I was scared. One session with a therapist and I could already see that this journey would be longer than I’d like and include rest stops in dark caverns of myself that I'd prefer to leave unexplored.
I worried I might lose the me that I knew—the one I counted on and everyone counted on.
Grasping was my best hope of clinging to all I was or thought I was. I’m sure you know what I mean.
I’m reading Stephen Cope's book, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, which may be the most compelling book on personal transformation I’ve ever read.
Cope elaborates on the ‘grasping’ and ‘clinging’ that most of us engage in when Change taps us on the shoulder.
“Most of us do not much like change. We get our mitts around the dharma of the moment and don’t want to let go…Hanging on is our first strategy.” (Cope, p732)
But transformation is pretty much inevitable once we see Change on the horizon. Our choice lies in how soon we succumb to what’s coming and how soon we may see what’s possible.
The longer we hang on to life as we’ve known it–or what’s ‘normal’–the more suffering we create for ourselves: indecision, sitting on the fence, feeling unmoored, lacking confidence or losing our mojo…whatever phrasing you want to use. The seats halfway between the status quo and change are the most unpleasant.
Cope explains:
“The mind caught up in a state of grasping is said to be ‘separate.’ What could this mean? Simply that the experience of craving intensifies the split between subject and object (between “me” and “the ice cream”) so that it appears that without the object of my grasping, I am unwhole. Without the object of my desire, I am bereft. Empty. Unfulfilled. Grasping amplifies the sense of separation from the object.”
In my case, grasping intensified the split between me and the sense of normalcy I craved: my old life. Without it, I felt ‘unwhole.’
Letting Go
Looking through my journals from the past four years. I can see that I was grasping for quite a while.
Unsurprisingly, as a high achiever, I was hell-bent on ace-ing my recovery. If I could find a thread of myself that was strong enough to hold me, I would shimmy up her as though she were a lifeline back to me and claim her as my path forward.
Over three years, I:
Studied wine, gastronomy and management at Le Cordon Bleu London and earned a diploma with distinction.
Created Simply Eau-de-Vie, a food and wine blog.
Co-developed a research study on personal reinvention, interviewing fifty people on their transformations and identifying patterns (which will be a part of my book).
Consulted for ed-tech start-ups and scale-ups in the UK and Europe.
Leaned into being a mom, relishing my grown children who were home more due to the pandemic.
Developed a business plan for a wine bar in Provence.
Applied for and was offered jobs.
Launched ExponentialChangemakers, a membership network propelling women from early to mid-career (which still exists today).
I’m tired just reading that list! At each step, I thought I’d recovered and “finished” my transformation. But I can now look back on that time and understand that I was still grasping.
“Grasping for an object actually interferes with knowing it.”
Although I was trying on new hats–new dharmas–each representing parts of me, my journey was incomplete. By grasping, I was interfering in the transformation process and with knowing.
I had not yet fully accepted the universe’s invitation (Read: REQUIREMENT) to transform further.
Only after I nearly burned myself out again did I realize my journey was far from over; I had more work to do on myself.
By then, I’d had enough. I was exhausted from grasping. So, I marched straight into the unknown and knocked on the transformation’s door. (Okay, I met a fellow coach, and he also pushed me.)
Once I welcomed it, everything shifted.
I stopped driving for an outcome and started to enjoy the journey. I gained a greater appreciation for the power of the universe and felt a sense of privilege that I had the opportunity to transform.
Doing the work was still hard, but swimming with the current was much easier than swimming against it.
Learning to stop grasping was my first lesson in detaching from the outcome—it was absolutely freeing!
It turns out I’d been trying to learn that for a couple of years, to no avail. And now, whether it’s in transformation or business, I help others do it. It’s the hardest step for most, but the sense of freedom that comes from it is like no other.
“When the mind is not colored by grasping, it is free—free of disturbance, obscuration, and separation…The mind is at ease. at ease. It is seeing clearly. And it is in union with all beings. Nonseparate! And when the mind is in this excellent and most refined state we are free to truly absorb ourselves in dharma.
When there is no obsessive concern with outcome, with gain of any kind, we are able to become completely absorbed in what we’re doing—our actions and thoughts undivided by worry. All of our energy can become concentrated on the task at hand.” (Cope, p. 604)
In the coming weeks, I’ll write more about transformations–mine and those of others–and include more about Stephen Cope's book and a few others I’m reading. If you want to share your experiences with me, don't hesitate to message me or leave a comment below. Please also share any questions. I’ll soon announce a Live Your Opus live conversation for paid subscribers, and I am keen to know what’s on your mind as you read. Thank you!
