A couple of months ago I woke up with a powerful thought that I believe is critical for success at work and home, and a life of joy!
We are all living lives based on patterns and habits, ruled unconsciously by fear.
How many times have you heard a story about people who divorce or separate and recreate the same situation in their next relationship?
How many of you are in long term relationships in which you blame the other person for your unhappiness? You believe THEY are not meeting YOUR needs?
That you have had a hard time being with such a difficult person?
How many times have you had a fight with your spouse/child/partner/sibling and after the heat of the emotion has settled, regret what you said and how you behaved?
All these are examples of how these patterns and habits rule our lives, unless we chooseto become conscious of them.
The difficulty for all of us is that we are UNCONSCIOUS of these patterns!
We don’t even know they exist and if someone else points them out, we vigorously defend ourselves and usually blame the other person!
HOW HABITS FORM
Any activity will become a pattern or a habit if we repeat it often enough because new pathways are set into the brain with repetition.
That’s why you will have previously learned that to create a new habit takes repetition for anywhere from 20-90 days.
Think of driving a car, your first few lessons were a nightmare for your parents, until you had practiced enough for new patterns to be laid down.
These patterns have been repeated so often that now, you can drive home listening to the radio, speaking on the phone, thinking about your life and you don’t even remember the actual driving, because it is so automatic.
That’s what happens with our behavioral patterns as well!
THE BACKGROUND OPERATING SYSTEM
Once we have patterns of behaviors set in, they run in the background like the operating system of our computers (Windows or Mac OSX).
We don’t see them, or even know they are working, but these unconscious /subconscious patterns control everything that goes on in our lives, just like the operating system controls everything in our computers!
And as importantly, certain programs automatically launch as soon as we turn our computers on. For example, when I turn my computer on, Skype automatically launches.
I am unaware of this unless I consciously put my attention on it, it just happens, and then if I become tired of all the little reminders, I have to do something to turn the program off.
The equivalent of Skype in our ‘brain computer’ are the unconscious behavior patterns. And most of us live life totally unaware of these patterns or programs launching or running in the background.
WHY THE PATTERNS FORM:
I believe many of the patterns develop as a result of fearful situations in our past.
Some event occurs when we are young….and our perception of it, note - not necessarily the truth, but our perception creates a story that we start to tell ourselves, about ourselves or others or our situations.
Before we know it, a wound is created and fear embeds itself as the “ false protector”.
Now we are protecting ourselves, defending ourselves, and we repeat the story we tell ourselves until it is ‘THE’ truth!
A series of behaviors grow out of this which become the programs that launch every day when we wake up.
THE BIGGEST FEAR
One of the big fears ruling most of our not so useful habits and patterns, is that we are unlovable!
We feel we are not really worthy of love or being loved, and it undermines everything we do.
We are constantly on guard in case someone finds this out, and we defend ourselves rather than consciously respond to what we perceive as attacks.
Can you think of situations where you react instantly to something and you are not even sure what you are reacting to! That’s the speed of the brain, the background operating platform.
You don’t have to think, our ‘brain google’ has found that pattern for you in less than a heartbeat and BAM, you have blown up at someone, or said something hurtful, behaved like a 2 year old or done something really stupid!
And then comes regret.
You don’t know why you keep doing that same thing.
It is probably not exactly the same thing each time, but the same type of behavior or emotion, the same pattern.
Anger, resentment, frustration, lashing out, impatience, blaming, behaving like a two year old, justification and defensiveness are the most common patterns (or habits)!!
HOW TO CHANGE: DO YOU WANT TO? REALLY?
Firstly, you have to want to! It takes work, just like I have to DO something to turn Skype off, we have to DO something to replace the old patterns.
Are you as joyful as you want? Is your life going in the direction you want it to be?
If you feel your misery is due to others, then you need a radical rethink!
Wake up to the facts that
- only YOU can change your habits and patterns, others may be better at recognizing them initially but only YOU can CHANGE them.
- there ARE a series of habits and patterns based on fear that are ruling your life.
- that you CAN change these if you want to.
- that YOU are the only one who can meet your needs. Others can’t.
- that you need to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for yourself and your actions.
- that the best relationships are those where both people strive to be whole so together they can create something new.
If you want to, you CAN become aware that there are patterns; you CAN recognize them immediately, and IF YOU CHOOSE to change them, you can.
If things are not the way you want them to be in your life, own that and change yourself. It takes a bit of work!
- You can repeatedly tell yourself a different story.
- Make it a goal to become aware of these unconscious patterns taking away your peace and joy. Put a note to remind you on your computer or the fridge!
- You can catch yourself every time you fall into an old pattern and stop.
- You can repeatedly focus on the new behaviors you would rather have.
- You can practice the new patterns CONSISTENTLY (for at least 30 days) until the new ones are set as the operating system of your brain, and they reach the top of your ‘brain google’ search instead of the old patterns.
- Teach your children about these principles. (Teaching is the best way to learn!)
NO BLAMING OTHERS any more!!!
They are YOUR patterns and YOUR fears!
Only YOU can help yourself be whole (which means to love yourself. REALLY love yourself. Unconditionally.) Divine intervention does help though!
Only YOU can love yourself, and once you see how special you really are, and can truly love yourself, then you can unconditionally love others!
And all those fears will be gone! Poof, like that!!
Let me know how you go!!
Until next month!
ZOOTIES FROM ME! And thanks for reading and being on my list!
PS. UNCONDITIONALLY ACCEPT YOURSELF, WARTS AND ALL!
If you are struggling with loving yourself, how about starting with unconditionally ACCEPTING yourself, just as you are?
If you think you need to improve, make changes or recognize patterns then do it, you will build your self respect and self acceptance.
Write to me and tell me what happens as a result of any changes you make from reading this newsletter! You can also make comments on The Joy Project blogs.....
