Con-GRAD-YOU-lations!
Have you noticed all the graduates in recent weeks? I see graduates all around me each year but this year they stand out, so I wondered why that was showing up so frequently for me. Graduating is acknowledging a step, a ritual around knowledge acquired and the completion of a phase of education.
What occurs to me is that graduates have the opportunity to stop and take stock, to get present to where they have been and where they are now. They can acknowledge and appreciate all they have done and learned and become.
There is often a period of time of winding down before the ceremony for the integration of accomplishments and gathering of the self through all the school years, experiences and relationships. At the high school level, many are readying to move on to a new location with a lightened load, divested of the superfluous. I want some of all that, don’t you?!
What does this have to do with those of us not graduating from something? It’s an opportunity to appropriate the experience for yourself. When coaching a CEO and his management team, I once advised a man on this team to graduate himself. He carried a belief that he always had to scramble to prove himself because of how he got his position. I told him to picture his career growth as a building, to stop and mentally look out from the mezzanine at where he had been and all he has done and to land fully where he is now. It was time to integrate, get present and accept who he is now and claim his place as a rightful member of the team. What a weight was lifted for him to go forth without the baggage dragging him down!
Guess what, you can do that for yourself any day of the year. You can decide to pause, and acknowledge yourself, your accomplishments, your growth – whatever is true for you. You can release whatever part of the past you want to; you can design a ceremony or ritual if you want to and lighten your load to move forward as the person you have become. One example for me is that I can now easily speak in front of a group and even be in a play (I did that recently for the first time). When I was young, I felt very scared speaking in front a group and that statement is no longer true. Pausing to look at the decades-long road to the present, reminds me of how huge the change is. The process was so long and gradual, I hardly noticed but what a huge shift! I can move forward with a new identity – not the one who was so scared to speak in public, but the one who is able to easily stand up and give a talk on the spot if requested. I am moving my imaginary tassel to the other side of my imaginary mortarboard.
How far have you come in some way you would like to recognize? What have you accomplished that you would like to stop and celebrate? For what changes could you graduate yourself? Integrate, graduate, celebrate!
It’s all improv,
Jody Kaylor