With our big brains and learning capacities, we figure out the way life is. Once we’ve established the way life is, we attribute our feelings, our relationships, and our sensibilities accordingly. There is a surrender to the way life was and it automatically becomes the way life is and will always be. A simpler way to say it is that we can be trapped by our experiences and form patterns that make change and growth really challenging.
If an event or a person doesn’t match expectations, we see it as an exception and continue to assimilate new experiences into a pattern that we have already set in stone. (Thank you Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget!) We cling to the familiar, even if it isn’t working. If it isn’t working, we tend to hold on to the pattern and find someone else to blame. “If you would see how right I am, everything would be perfect.” It takes motivation and courage to break patterns and own our wrong thinking. The reward is self-awareness. It can be freedom from destructive patterns, even though the first stage of owning our participation in negative outcomes creates anxiety.
Life can be the result of many experiences, not just the ones that have shaped you and me. If we helplessly accept life as only “my experience,” we begin to mindfully close doors of alternative possibilities. Where courage comes in to experiment with different choices, ones that wouldn’t come automatically. If we do that, the title of this blog would be “That’s the way I am, so that’s the way life is becoming.” In other words, we become a creator of new experiences and life changes. We become an instrument of expression, rather than a mirror image of our experiences.
Here’s to creating possibilities!
With love, Rosanne
