The Art of Pivoting

Big or small. Life is all about pivoting. We can plan as much as we want, but there must always be room for the unexpected. Even knowing this information, it's not uncommon to be thrown off when life requires us to pivot. Why?

Two things are happening simultaneously in a pivot: lost expectations and disappointment.

Disappointment. It's a feeling that often doesn't sit well. As parent's we often try to distract our children from disappointment (let this be encouragement to let them sit in it with you). Perhaps we try to distract our children, because we haven't quite figured out disappointment ourselves and how to sit in it. When we sit in disappointment, the very best friend that tags along is grief. Grief is hard. Sometimes it lets us look at the grief in the moment, and sometimes grief says "and this too."

For those who have experienced developmental trauma, "and this too" comes up frequently. It means our bodies tend to naturally avoid it all the more. However, the only way to get out of disappointment is to grieve it. When developmental trauma meets complex trauma, the "and's" multiply. It may mean that learning to pivot is a longer journey and that's okay.

It's humorous to think that the word pivot could hold so much weight. It's perhaps why it feels "silly" to be stuck, and yet as we look at it this way it hopefully makes more sense.

Consider that for most things in life, we set goals, have plans, have hope for the future. When our "hope" becomes too specific, we often shift our mindset from expectancy to expectations. We begin to expect that things will go a certain way, rather than "it will happen the way it will happen" or "it will happen the way that God intends it to happen." This was a term I first looked at in more detail when completing my masters. I'd had a life history thus far of some wild pivots. Dealt with my fair share of disappointment and grief, however, in changing this outlook into the future, it helped mitigate some of the grief that I would experience in the pivot. The reason is that I have come to expect good things, but not specific good things.

I'm certainly not perfect at it. Even in this last year there were many unexpected things and it was awful. It impacted so many things from our clients lives, to our personal lives, along with the business and professional lives. Part of this grief was wrapped up in the vision I had for Riptide and the ways in which it would grow to support the community. I had become too specific. The grief was harder. That being said, I will always remain a dreamer, however a dreamer with a timeline makes a pivot harder.

On the other hand, you've seen the picture at the top of the blog by now. It's a fun picture, yes... but if you know me then you know I'm intentional even in the details (whether that's to do with design or relationships). This picture was taken for marketing to market a skillset that we would have by the end of the year. However, due to circumstances beyond our control, that goal will take a little longer. Which leads us to the pivot: each one of us will have level one theraplay training come Spring 2026. In the end, it was a good pivot, as the need for this type of therapy continues to grow. I was and remain more married to the idea of continuing education to be the best therapists we can be for the community and to receive the best possible training to meet those needs.

Let us go back to the thought presented above: Two things are happening simultaneously in a pivot: lost expectations and disappointment. The question becomes can we find the third... JOY. Some of us were born for adventure. We thrive in the unexpected that the day might bring. For those of us who have had one to many surprises, we may be less likely to welcome the unknown. However, we can grow and stretch our brain for our entire lifetime. Believe it or not, we can all grow and stretch our brain to be more accepting of life's pivots.

The way to get to a place where we can handle pivots differently, is ensuring that we have the true ability to process grief and disappointment in real time. AND we can begin to live with expectancy, rather than expectation. For example: Expectancy: I expect that I am going to work today. Expectation: I am going to work today and I'm going to love every minute of it! The latter sets us up for failure. Not only to be let down by the experience, but to be let down by ourselves, and become more stuck in the belief that things can't go right for us.

If we take that one further to and talk about having faith, hope and trust in our lives, we can sometimes get caught up on the way in which we get to the outcome. As well, when the outcome becomes too specific, we are also setting up expectations. Yes, we can hope for specific things, however, can we also have the ability to know that perhaps what we are asking for, isn't what is intended for us. The more tightly we held onto a specific vision, the bigger the disappointment and grief. As you can see, we aren't going to always get it right (when we need to pivot). We're going to set ourselves up for unintended failures and we are also going to experience failures we haven't expected. The art of pivoting is both having the skills to process the disappointment and grief, while holding the mindset of expectancy. Bringing us the ability to find joy in our lives, no matter the circumstances. Are you ready to give it a try?