What are your Life Patterns?
Hi Everyone,
Month of October is a great month to break free from old life patterns. As some of you already know, due to needing to do some healing of my own at present, I’ve stepped back from several duties in my life. At first difficult to let go, I’ve accepted these lessons and can already see the benefit in the situation (allowing me to embrace the ‘clearing of my full plate’ to allow newness in). Thank you to those who sent such loving and encouraging emails – I appreciate your support… Childers has been great for us and we are starting to connect with the broader community, to slowly but consistently work towards opening up a meditation/healing centre in time to come… By the way, I will still be facilitating both programs in October at our wonderful Leura Meditation Retreat Centre and I look forward to see those who plan to join me.
This months article is to help you break disempowering patterns – hope it helps 🙂
What are your life patterns?…
“Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage… Truth lives outside of all patterns.” ― Bruce Lee
It is said that we are the product of our environment, that we can’t help who we are and that it’s not our fault. Perhaps to a certain degree there may be some validity in this but for the most part it just brings more confusion about our own disempowering patterns and staying stuck in them! This kind of thinking serves to keep us victims of circumstance, bogged down in the mud of self-pity and martyrdom. Sure, we can gripe about the lousy hand we’ve been dealt in life and play the ‘poor me’ card – over and over…. Or we can change and take back our power!
It is true, to some extent we do become like our environment, but to what degree is entirely by choice. Once we wake up to ourselves we must decide to change ourselves – our thoughts, our beliefs, our attitudes – in order to change our circumstances. Waiting for others to change only feeds our own intricate belief systems of blaming, shaming and framing. We’ll create intricate patterns of projection, expectation, criticism and poor judgement that stem from a fear-based perspective – creating nothing more than a very limited view of this amazing world and our amazing Self. We have all been given the will-power and the power-of-choice to do what we want to do and to be who we want to be, but do we actually use this power?… So ask yourself – am I making the most of my choices or am I allowing myself to reinforce my own destructive patterns? Patterns can keep us trapped and once caught it would seem easier to give-up and subscribe to conformism. ‘Getting out’ can seem difficult but it’s not impossible. I once saw a very tenacious crab break free from the pack. They were relentlessly clambering all over this one little crab, to stop it from climbing out of the bucket. But their attempts failed – courage and determination won the day and the little crab broke free. Unfortunately, most people readily accept their ‘fate’ as a means to not move forward – secretly keeping their eye on someone or something to blame. Don’t be one of them – be the little crab!
If you grew up in a rough neighbourhood, you probably learnt to be tough just to survive. If you were brought up in a violent, angry or negative environment, chances are you probably use violence, anger or negativity yourself (in one form or another). If your family or friends are alcoholics, drug addicts, addicted to work or sport, or dogmatically religious, you will probably walk the same paths and create the same patterns – so choose wisely and carefully who you wish to hang out with. Though take note – it’s not really them! They are simply the bearers of your triggers and your ‘mirror’ – they are only a small part of the pattern that we choose to focus on the most! The main thing to remember is this – I alone create my belief system… I alone create my thoughts… I alone create my patterns… Rather liberating, don’t you think? So don’t wait for adversity to slap you before you change. Change because you want to do something different with your life (before life forces you to). You may still want to believe that it’s others (or your ‘childhood’) that holds you back – but it’s not! You hold yourself back!
Successful people don’t define themselves with their past, they don’t equate their worth with what’s happened to them. No, they use their past to learn from and to inspire them to build up from there. They don’t allow their history to repeat by allowing themselves to be pulled back. They don’t use the excuse of a bad or poor childhood, instead they change their patterns – to do better, to be better. Successful people don’t wait for someone to help inspire them. They don’t wait for something to happen, they MAKE it happen. And when I talk about successful people, I don’t look at materially rich folk. I equate success with anyone who has changed their past for the better. Who live happily and contented with who they are today, as individuals. True survivors don’t just survive, they thrive – with nothing to prove and no-one to impress. That’s success!
Patterns can take many forms, therefore its up to us to be as creative as we dare ourselves to be – it has nothing to do with anyone else. We can weave a magical carpet ride to rise above the emotional rubbish of the world and enjoy the beauty of all things… Or we can create a mere existential paradigm that shifts between boredom, fear and chaos. Denial is a pattern. Self pity is a pattern. Anger is a pattern. Blame is a pattern. Jealousy is a pattern. Violence is a pattern. Poverty is a pattern. Toxic relationships is a pattern. Living in the past is a pattern… But then so is love a pattern. Self-respect is a pattern. Self-care is a pattern. Self-discipline is a pattern. Cooperation and kindness is a pattern. Choice and decisiveness is a pattern. Taking your own reins is a pattern. Creating happy thoughts is a pattern. Get the picture? We can stay stuck in patterns of destruction and sabotage or we can create new patterns of abundance and joy. So know this for sure – life does not come with a remote – it’s up to us as individuals to get over ourselves, to get up and to change the channel. And you know what – it is definitely worth it 🙂
Question: Do I blame people / circumstances for my own patterns that keep me stuck, repeatedly pulling me back into old unwanted situations?
Consideration: Why do repeat it if I don’t like how it makes me feel? (honesty is key here so no blaming)
Activity: Regularly check your thoughts to change your life patterns… The more ‘conscious’ we live the easier it is to recognise, accept and change the way we live. Instead of beating up on ourselves (a pattern) we now give ourselves a chance to ‘survive and thrive’ (a new pattern). Systematically breaking down disempowering cycles – one at a time – is the way forward. Recognition is step one. Acceptance is step two (prevents denial and resistance to change). Step three is to change the way you think about any given situation – from negative to positive – over and over till you’ve created a new life-giving, more sustainable pattern. Step four – pat yourself on the back and just keep going 🙂
Lots of love Annemarie