To Know You Is to Love You

The perpetual treadmill

Do you find that so often you are doing the same thing over and over again?  And not only are you repeating the same patterns, but you don’t even like the results! 

Perhaps you wake up in the morning and you vow that today will be different – when your kids start to whine, you won’t lose your patience, or when your mother-in-law begins to complain about all her ailments, you’ll show some compassion.  For others of you, you promise yourself that you’re not going to let your boss get to you – after all, he’s got a lousy management style, it’s really not personal.  And then there are some who end up having the constant pity party and getting into a rut that goes nowhere fast – you swear you’re going to do things differently in order to make things better, but somehow it’s always the same.

I know these examples because that’s exactly the way I used to feel!

Survival skills

What I’ve learned from my both personal and professional experiences is that we’ve learned certain behaviors in childhood that have helped us “survive.” These were behaviors that helped us adapt to our families of origin.  If they worked – if these behaviors got us the love we needed – we continued to use them.

And since they worked, even though these same behaviors may no longer make sense when we’re adults, we don’t change them.  It’s as if we are acting on “automatic-pilot,” as if we are emotionally frozen.  We react to situations in a knee-jerk way, mindlessly.

The upside and downside of change

Many of you do realize that you’re not happy with the results you’re getting in life.  But yet you do not make a change.  And I think there are a couple of reasons for this.  Of course, a big reason is that you don’t know how to go about making the changes.  And, in future posts I hope to offer tips to you to do so.

But one of the major blocks to making change is that it’s uncomfortable to do so.  So as miserable or as dissatisfied with the results of your actions as you might be, it’s got one big thing going for it; there’s one big plus: you know how to do it!  After all, you’ve been doing it that way all of your life.

Coming out of the fog

One of the definitions of insanity is to do something over and over again the same way and expect to get a different result.  How can you expect to have different results in your life if you keep repeating the same patterns?

But I have more important questions for you:  how can you make changes if you aren’t even aware of yourself?  How can you make choices in life that will suit you, satisfy you, bring you joy -- if you don’t know you?  The true you. 

So to start this process, here’s a suggestion:  don’t do anything different.  Just start to become aware of yourself. Two or three times a day just notice your body in the moment.

I also want you to know that there’s more to our reactions than what I’ve indicated in this post.  But the information that I’ll be sharing it with you in the future is so exciting, it deserves a post of its own.