David Richo - Ready: How to Know When to Go and When to Stay

Why did I remain in that relationship for so long?

What kept me tied to my addiction all that time?

Why did I stay stuck in that job so many years?

How did I put up with being treated that way?

What got me so petrified that I couldnt go?

When I was already losing, why was I willing to keep losing even more?

When that situation no longer fit for me, why wouldnt I leave it?

When the only thing left was still not enough, why did I settle for crumbs?

Why have I lingered so long in the Land of Less?

In more than fifty years as a psychotherapist, I have found that one issue has come up with clients more often than any other: staying too long in what doesnt work. I have done this too. Maybe everyone has? This what doesnt work can apply to relationships, jobs, predicaments, addictions, physical pain, unresolved conflicts, enmeshment in family drama, or affiliation to a religion, organization, or institutionjust about anything we become involved in. We might be just as afraid to leave our discomfort zone as we are to leave our comfort zone! Our challenge is to know when it is time to go and then act on what we know.

On the other hand, there are times in life when we dont stay long enough. We dont hang in there through thick and thin in a relationship or affiliation that really can work. Our challenge, then, is to know when it is time to stay long enough to upgrade our connection so that it works.

This book is about both options in our human story: not staying too long in what doesnt work and staying long enough in what can. We will discover the fascinating connection these topics have to who we are and how we got to be that way.

Central to questions of staying and leaving is a third focus. And on it all depends: the mystery of timing. Timing in this book refers to timeliness, the opportune time, what is timely, what we mean when we say: The time has come. Why we stay when its time to go or go when its time to stay is not entirely about choice and action. We wonder what makes us able to take action on a Monday rather than on a Sunday or Tuesday? Some clock lodged deeply within us tells us exactly when we are ready to go or even when to know we need to go. To hurry ourselvesor to lingerdoes not work if that inner timing is off. We cant jump the gun on Sunday. We cant lag till Tuesday. Everything real in life has to pass the test of time; nothing can override it.

Ultimately, we only go or stay when we are ready to do so. Our readiness depends on the ping of a timer not in our hands. Indeed, time is a player in all our comings and goings. This book helps us respond to our own perfect timing for the important decisions in life and then act in accord with that timing. We then reach the new world where never a gate slams shut nor a door is ever locked. These are the everywhere Dharma gates that never close. Dharma refers to the enlightened teachings of Buddha.

Self-help books and teachers may give the impression that we can take care of staying or going by jump-starting ourselves, taking action right away, snapping to it or out of it, using a technique that will hurl us into our next chapter. These strategies can sometimes work. But there is something else that has to be taken into account, an insoluble enigma to all of us: individual readiness, the other portrait in the locket of timing. Timing is not magic. It does not make us move. But it does help us activate when we are attuned to its gong. That attuning is readying ourselves. Readiness to stay or go means that:

• We see whats going on.

• We are prepared, fit to take action.

• We are equipped with what it takes to make our move.

• We are willing to act.

We understand our topic of readiness for movement best when we consider two possibilities: The first is we cant go because the timing is not right, a stubborn fact we have to respect. We are not ready to wake up because no bugle has sounded reveille, at least not yet.

The second possibility is not going when the timing is right. We disregard the inner alarm clock that shouts Wake up! Instead, we go back to sleep. To be stuck can mean not being ready for choice and movement when their time has indeed come. Then what we arent changing, we are choosing. We are caught in inertia; a body at rest tends to stay at rest. Here is a summary of how each of the two possibilities works: