From Right Handed to Left

If you’re a 30-something right handed person, who decides to start writing with their left… could you do it?

Would it be a smooth transition?

Probably not! Your writing would probably be illegible for a good while.

But with patience and effort, you know you would get there. You would be able to produce legible, even pretty, handwriting using the ‘wrong’ hand.

I remind myself of this, when I’m buckling under the frustration of bad habits and thinking patterns.

My ‘dominant hand’ here – the hand I’ve used throughout childhood, teens and my twenties, hundreds of thousands of times, is to think/speak/act from a place of self-doubt, anxiety and powerlessness, to be driven by a need to fight or escape uncomfortable emotions.

In the last decade, I’ve been working hard to shift to the left; to accept my thoughts, feelings and emotions, whilst still showing them who’s boss.

Cripes… it’s hard work and a slow process.

But I’m just about ‘legible.’ On a good day.

And whilst this is an incredibly frustrating and testing process; though the temptation to just use my right hand is always there… I know that this won’t make it any easier in the long-run.

I know that at some point, if I keep trying, using the other hand will feel okay. Natural. Comfortable.

At some point, confidence or rather acceptance, will become as easy and familiar as the opposite.

It just takes effort, patience and a whole lot of not giving up.