So I woke up this morning. ..late. Usually I'm up and at it pretty early. But sometimes when we are going through big changes in life, we have to have patience with everything. The one thing you have to be patient with is YOURSELF!
Giving yourself time to change is crucial. There are so many “self help” books out there telling amazing transformational stories that it would be impossible to read them all and each one is unique. Just like you are.
If you have been around a few years, much of what you do (probably around 90%) is routine and can be either beneficial to you or it can also be routines that do not serve you positively at all. A good example of this could be you learned that people would not bother you if you just hid out of sight when you were younger. Out of sight, out of mind as they say. Back then it was ok because as long as your homework got done and you came home on time for dinner, nobody said anything and you were all good. It was like you had “auto-safety control.”
So that behaviour served you back then and made you feel safe; even though you may have felt lonely, you were still ok. Fast forward a few years (like 30 or so) and take a look at that same behaviour. Are you still hiding out (isolating yourself) or doing "adult" hiding behaviours so you feel safe? These can run the gamut from sleeping all day/binge watching TV and just doing “braindead” stuff that allows you to not think about what it is that you are doing with your life and why you may or may not be happy/content. Many addiction filled lives have started off this way, innocently wanting to feel safe and accepted.
You have to step outside the “comfort box” that you made for yourself and at first, it can be difficult. Just like the pair of shoes that grace the cover of this blog, they sure look comfortable but the performance is probably lacking. If you find yourself depressed, lonely, single or just not able to interact with others in a meaningful way, you have to sit down with yourself and ask some questions. The first one could be “who am I? Now, this may seem like a big question to start with, but big issues like depression, addiction and other mental health issues don’t just disappear if you hide in a corner or drink yourself under the table at every opportunity that you get when you are not doing something that would be considered productive use of this, the greatest gift that you will ever receive. It’s the gift of life! No other beings (that we know of so far) have the ability to change what and who they are at any time that they wish.
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| Time to transform? |
There are of course, some very standout and great examples of people that have reinvented themselves overnight and made some drastic changes to their lives that then affected thousands and in some cases millions of others. But, we are not all one of these super achievers right now, in this moment. So if we want to make a change, where do we start? By looking at your life (remember that question: Who am I?)There is a good quote from Dr. Bruce Lipton in “biology of belief” aka “the wisdom of our cells” for those that like it in audible format. He says “If you want to see what is going on in your subconscious mind, look at the printout of your life”. Let’s take a look at that. The subconscious is a dark and murky area for most that have not taken the time to learn how their brains work on a basic level. Looking at the beginning of this blog post we saw that a learned behaviour was to go to a safe place (ie. your room etc) where you could do what you wanted with nobody around to say anything or make you feel a certain way. Your subconscious, being the nice learning computer that it is, figured out a few simple solutions for you back then when life was really simple (no job, no family, no kids, NO RESPONSIBILITY of any kind yet) and unbeknownst to you, you are still doing the same thing and wondering why your life is not going how you feel it should. Remember that time you had the new job opportunity but instead of doing up a fresh resume and getting your hair done/beard trimmed and pressing your suit, you went to your man cave, turned on the tv and made sure the door was closed because you were not feeling safe as a new job is a huge change and seems like it might be a bit uncomfortable.
So, hiding in the school library behind a stack of books just changed into your man-cave with the door closed and a case of bud
If you can see that what you are doing is exactly the same behaviour, just wrapped up in some new clothes, you are on the right track. Once you can see what you are doing is not a positive thing anymore, the first thing to do is acknowledge that and begin by doing just one thing differently. Like I am writing this blog post. For me, writing is an outlet that I really enjoy and teaching is also something I love. So by sitting down and writing this, I am making myself think more intensely about what it is I am doing to change my behaviours at least just a little bit each and every day. It may be that nobody reads this and I will be the only one getting the benefit (how selfish!) of my own writing but at the end of the day, it helps to do some real self analysis instead of the same old routine that used to be good to you but now is not serving you later in life. So, get out of your cave and go and do ONE new thing today that you have not done in the past. If all that entails is walking to the cafe on the corner with your laptop and having a coffee out of your comfort zone without the safety of four walls and your xbox controller, that is a start!
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| Get off that ol' treadmill |
Change happens immediately, once you start! Nothing big, just start small and then you can build on that one change and before you know it, you will look back and all those small changes will look like a whole new life! I started writing like this over 8 years ago and never did publish anything officially but looking back at those last 8 years, although I may have done a lot of running and hiding and what looked like I was falling apart, in the big picture I am so much farther ahead in how I run my life (far from perfect!) that it is hard to stay down even when life delivers what at times can seem like a kick in the teeth just when you think that everything is running smoothly (or maybe you were just playing that old “safety” loop and what appeared to be everything going “ok” was just another version of you hiding out from life and wondering why you woke up one day and you seem to have nothing to show for all the time you have spent on this earth.
EM
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