Not Yet
Not everything that is growing can be seen yet.
What might be growing while we’re still waiting for something to happen?
I use the words “not yet” all the time.
“I can’t sing.”
Not yet.
“I’m not good at presenting.”
Not yet.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
Not yet.
I love what those two small words can do. They take something that feels fixed and make it movable. They stop I can’t becoming I am someone who can’t.
They leave the door slightly ajar.
Possibility might still come through.
Which is all very well and very wise when I’m offering Not Yet to somebody else.
Living inside it myself is an entirely different matter.
Because while my head understands that some things take time, that change is not always visible and that uncertainty is part of being human, my body would quite like to know when, thank you very much.
Preferably with a date…And a plan!!
There is something about waiting without knowing what I am waiting until that I find excruciating.
Not now is one thing. Not yet asks me to remain in relationship with something unresolved.
And right now there is rather a lot of unresolved.
There are big things in our family whose outcomes we simply do not know.
We don’t yet know when we will be properly settled into another home.
There are plans we would like to make that depend on other things happening first.
If I am not careful, I gather all those Not Yets together until they become one enormous concrete boulder around my neck.
Everything starts to feel uncertain. Unfinished. As though life is somewhere over there, waiting to begin once all these things have sorted themselves out.
That is usually when I need to come much closer in.
Because I do know what I am having for tea tonight.
I have dates set with friends and family.
I know when I am going to Spain.
There are people I know I will speak to. Work already in the diary. A dog who will need walking regardless of whether I have resolved the meaning of life before breakfast.
Small things. Ordinary things.
But perhaps there is something important about keeping life close enough to touch when the bigger picture refuses to come into focus.
What we can’t see
The image I created to sit alongside this piece has a signpost above ground.
NOT YET.
But underneath the ME person standing there is an enormous network of roots.
Resilience. Self-belief. Wisdom. Experience. Patience. Faith. Courage. Inner strength.
And I think that is the bit I am most interested in.
Because Not Yet can look remarkably like nothing is happening.
No announcement. No breakthrough. No satisfying evidence that all this waiting is achieving anything whatsoever.
Perhaps we are too accustomed to looking above ground for proof of progress.
When I look backwards, some of the periods in which I was least able to see movement were perhaps the ones in which something important was taking root.
Strangely, I think about the period when Ash was having treatment.
There was huge uncertainty around us, but our actual days became very small.
Gym. Walk the dog. Planking. Treatment. Meals for one. A bit of work.
Repeat.
We couldn’t do anything about the big outcome.
So life acquired a rhythm around the things we could do.
At the time, I don’t think I thought of those things as anchors. They were simply what the day required.
Looking back, perhaps they were exactly that. Small points of contact with ourselves and with ordinary life while something much bigger was happening around us.
I wonder whether I need some of those again now.
Not the same routine. Life is different.
And not held so tightly that the routine itself becomes another attempt to control what cannot be controlled.
Just small anchor points.
A walk. Movement. A meal. A conversation. A little work. Something creative.
Things that keep the roots watered.
Perhaps the practice isn’t to make uncertainty disappear.
Perhaps it is to build enough rootedness that uncertainty doesn’t take everything else with it.
There is an irony in all this.
In my coaching work, I am often able to see change in somebody before they can see it themselves.
They are still looking for evidence that they have arrived somewhere. I can see what is already shifting.
They are still looking for the butterfly. I can see the roots.
Which leaves me with a rather inconvenient question.
Can I learn to offer myself the same quality of attention?
To notice what might already be changing without constantly measuring myself against what hasn’t happened yet?
Perhaps that is part of living with Not Yet too.
When Not Yet becomes a hiding place
There is, of course, another side to all this. Because Not Yet can be hopeful. But it can also be extremely convenient.
I’m not ready yet.
I haven’t got time yet.
I don’t know enough yet.
The circumstances aren’t quite right yet.
The Pixie of Procrastination is very much alive and kicking in my world.
I am moving house imminently and can still feel the occasional pull towards behaving as though packing might somehow complete itself if I leave it alone for long enough.
And then there is writing. I have wanted to write a book for years.
One day.
When I have more time.
When I know what it is.
When I feel ready.
Not yet.
At what point does Not Yet stop being a place of becoming and become somewhere we hide?
I’m not sure there is a neat answer.
Perhaps it has something to do with whether we are still in relationship with the thing. Whether something is quietly growing, being explored, practised, tested.
Or whether we are standing perfectly still while telling ourselves we are waiting.
And perhaps there is another possibility I have thought about much less.
Some Not Yets might eventually become Not Mine.
That one stops me a little.
Because not everything we imagine is ours to bring into being.
Not every door has to open.
Not every idea has to become a project.
Not every path we glimpse is one we are meant to walk.
I can easily make Not Yet mean:
It hasn’t happened, but if I keep going long enough, eventually it will.
Perhaps sometimes it won’t. Perhaps sometimes growth is not about finally getting the thing we were waiting for.
Perhaps the growth was what happened while we were waiting.
And maybe there is wisdom in learning to recognise the difference.
When to keep faith with something.
And when to release it.
For now
The hardest thing about Not Yet, for me, is the waiting.
That constant sense of longing.
The desire for resolution.
The wanting to know.
And what I cannot see while I am in it is whatever progress might already be happening just beyond my eyeline.
Or deep within me.
Maybe my work is not to become somebody who suddenly loves uncertainty.
I suspect that really would be asking too much.
Maybe it is simply to practise inhabiting it differently.
Less held in a body of impatience, on edge, tense and irritated because life refuses to provide the timeline I requested.
More able to witness.
To breathe.
To keep close to what I know.
To tend the small anchors.
And to keep faith with the possibility that something may already be happening underneath.
I don’t know yet.
Perhaps that’s the point.
Bobby Davis is a qualified executive and team coach with extensive experience in organisational development, business change (the people angle), human resources and personal leadership.
Her coaching experience is against a backdrop of 30+ years working in managerial and human resources/OD roles in the British Army, Not for Profits, Professional Services and most recently with a private equity owned Hotel Group.
She has led the People “strand” within large business transformation programmes, creating people strategies, internal coaching schemes and embedding strong performance cultures, as well as supporting at all levels of an organisation to implement effective change.
She is absolutely passionate in her pursuit to support, challenge and deliver sustainable change for individuals, teams and organisations, one person at a time if necessary!
You can catch her for a chat about coaching, using your body better as a leader and/or supporting you in HR/OD here Bobby Davis FCIPD PCC | LinkedIn
And check out her dulcet tones in “More Than A Lumpy Jumper” - Conversations about Leadership, Life and Learning here More Than a Lumpy Jumper | Podcast on Spotify
