What "being in the driver's seat" looks like now

For decades, chaos kept me constantly dodging, weaving, and changing my speed. Can I learn to trust cruise control?

What I remember best about March 2020 - besides the stacks and stacks of pancakes I made for my kids - was the strange sense of focused calm that settled over me.

While schools and businesses closed, every day more dominoes falling, my brain went straight into the mode it was most familiar with: playing defense. It may sound strange to say that I found comfort in the fact that the world was suddenly turned upside-down, but it’s also, just as strangely, true. It felt almost like relief, tinged with excitement: “Oh, THERE IT IS, the other shoe dropping! It’s about time.”

Photo by Gijs Coolen on Unsplash

The other day, scrolling reels on Instagram, I came across a post saying that women who grow up in traumatic or unstable environments often become very controlling of their surroundings, in an effort to stabilize their (and eventually, their children’s) lives.

As I read it, I realized that somewhere along the way, my own survival mechanism took a different turn: my coping superpower was to become super-adaptable.

I leapt straight out of a chaotic childhood, where it never felt safe to get too comfortable with the status quo, into young adulthood where I continued to rush toward disruption. With change swirling around me and, soon enough, young children of my own to care for, I took charge in the best way I knew how: making the best of any situation I found myself in, even if I couldn’t control the situation itself.

I got so good at “making the best of things”, in fact, that even if the change was negative (a loss in financial security or lower standard of living, for example) I could almost convince myself that I actually chose it and that it was ultimately for the better.

I realized that my own survival mechanism took a different turn:
my coping superpower was to become super-adaptable.

It’s not unusual for me to have several fully-fleshed-out visions for my family’s life, some wildly different from others, taking up real estate in my imagination. That way, I figure, whatever actually happens will be the best possible version of itself - right?

Often, it’s also meant trying to “get ahead of” potential trauma (or drama) by leaping earlier than absolutely necessary in a “You can’t fire me, I QUIT” life-management strategy. It’s a sort of insurance against the unexpected, which can be comforting, but also exhausting. Does all that future-casting mean I have the ability to harness extraordinary vision, or just a tendency toward extraordinary self-delusion?

Maybe a little of both.

I was recently a guest on my friend Danielle Wiley’s podcast, the Art of Sway. We talked a lot about adaptation, change, and reinvention in the episode, and at some point I made the comment that reinvention is happening to all of us, all the time, and “I am just more comfortable in the driver’s seat.” It was an offhand comment, but happened to be the one her team selected as a clip to promote the show on social, and I’ve been thinking about what I said, and its implications, ever since I saw it.

Because while it’s true that I like to feel like I’m navigating the car, it’s also true that I’ve done a lot of random switching of lanes and jumping off at random exits to avoid traffic jams. Technically I’ve been the one at the steering wheel, but I've mostly been on defense, reacting to circumstances rather than charting (and sticking to) a course.

I’ve been thinking over the “reinvent/reinventing/reinvention” concept I’ve been using in my work for the past several years, and what it means to me now. Perhaps my new version of “reinventing” is simply to slow down, stay put, look around, take a breath.

Perhaps because I finally feel safe in the knowledge that my “status quo” is both aligned with my true desires and also stable enough to last, I am able to be a little choosier about which “reinventions” I decide to embark on.

I’m still most comfortable being in the driver’s seat. But right now, I’m just hanging out in the right-hand lane, going the speed limit - and enjoying the scenery.