Developing the habit to look before you leap
You have habits, thought patterns, beliefs, practices that guarantee that your life will not change, especially won’t change for the better.
When you do a course, read a book, or talk to a coach, you want to do and change the most important thing about your life: drop 30 pounds, start a new business, or leave your husband.
You are unprepared.
You are like a medical student: you need to practice surgery on cadavers before you cut open your mother or father… translating for those that can’t see the forest for the trees: you need to develop the practices that are building blocks for a good life.
Your life IS like an oceanliner tucked in tightly into a bay… you need different skills to turn it around to head out from the bay than you needed to get into this locked in prison you call your life.
Life and everything you ever wanted is happening on the open seas…
But there is a little problem: in order to head out to the open seas… you have to turn the ship of your life around.
And it takes potentially hundreds of small, insignificant habits to do that: and you don’t have those habits.
Some of those habits are doing habits, others are thinking habits.
Here are two I looked at and tested today in my own life… because, you see, the habits that keep you in the bay are promoted by the genes and are promoted by the shared “subconscious”… as Jung called it, or the shared memes as others call it. I can feel the vibration, so I’ll call it “energy transmission”. It is ongoing, even though sometimes, like now, the energy is stronger.
OK, the habits:
Habit #1:
I bought a Lindt chocolate bar on Tuesday. 85% cacao.
I was surprised that muscle test said OK… but when I muscle test, many times it is not the body intelligence that speaks, it is Source/Soul/Self speaks, meaning there is something I need to learn, there is something I need to teach. OK, I am game.
I decided that I was going to eat one square a day, with my coffee.
But I ate half of the bar on Tuesday, the other half on Wednesday… even though it was not really good, and I didn’t really enjoy it.
At the same time I managed to say no to coffee, and increase my hydration 20 points.
What was the difference?
When I felt like making another cup of coffee, I stopped and reflected. And half of the times I chose to make a cup of coffee, the other half I chose not to.
Choice is “selecting freely AFTER consideration”.
Consideration is reasoning, weighing, seeing the consequences.
- I saw that
I said I was going to drink less coffee so I can increase my hydration - I noticed that I was craving coffee when I was either hungry or thirsty
- I like my victory over my impulses more than I love my coffee…
On the other hand, when it came to the chocolate, the consideration went like this
- this chocolate is destroying all the gains I have had by turning me into a fat burning metabolism person
- if I stretch it out for a week, I’ll end up putting on seven pounds
- I already screwed up by buying it… let’s get rid of it
- it is supposed to taste good… I hope this time it will melt in my mouth like it is supposed to
What I notice is this:
YOU don’t ever choose. You act robotically. Knee jerk reaction… Robotically take the action that doesn’t support you, or robotically the action that does support you… but you don’t do the “AFTER CONSIDERATION” part.
So you feel locked in. And you are.
You cannot turn your life around by robotic actions: they come from and result in unawareness, and unconsciousness.
When you live some part of your life unconsciously you are on a slippery slide into bad bad places.
Your results, returning the ship analogy, your ship gets deeper and deeper into the bay and among rocks.
Eventually it will be impossible to turn it around… and if you look, your life may be like that already, in every area of your life.
I know a person who did a health consultation with me. I spent three hours on her and with her. She decided to eat four items on her food list. Because those she liked. Shrimp, butter, eggs and bell peppers.
Her health deteriorated to a level where she was barely making it through the day.
The rest of her life is in the same hopeless state… so this is a habit…
Justifying victimhood by systematically destroying all hope for turning your ship around.
Now, if you are that person (she is not alone with this behavior) then we have nothing to talk. You’ll use everything I say to the same purpose: to dig yourself deeper in.
But if you have good intentions, and yet you find yourself doing harmful things to yourself, start demanding of yourself to do nothing that you don’t choose.
Choosing is selecting freely, AFTER CONSIDERATION.
Why is it important to say “selecting FREELY?”
Because you are almost never free, at least not automatically.
Your undeclared commitments are self-destructive, and they are like chains… no freedom.
They, the undeclared commitments, should come up in the CONSIDERATION phase as valid consideration.
Wanting to make me wrong, wanting to remain a victim, not wanting to be responsible, wanting to be loose, unattached, uncommitted, at liberty to do anything at any time…, playing with fire, these undeclared commitments are valid concerns, and they weigh in your decision making: they are considerations.
If you suppress them, if you never give them voice, they run the show that is your life.
Validate them. Validation doesn’t mean you give them free reign. Validation means: you see that they have the right to be, that you have the right to feel that way. But life is more than just these automatic, half-conscious desires, I hope.
Because all of these undeclared commitments are the grease on the slippery slide to unhappiness, unfulfillment, a meaningless life.
You have to practice this process (this is a process, not done in an instant!) on issues that are not that important for the overall quality of your life.
Getting up when the alarm goes off or stay in bed for another five minutes?
Go to bed or read that one more article, or watch that one more video?
Eat when you are not hungry, or put it away until your body says: I am ready to take new food in.
Tens of opportunities a day.
Practice. Get the hang of it. It is one of the most important tools you’ll ever learn.
I promised you two habits, so here is the second:
When it looks like there is no choice, there is no possibility, you need to quit… wait.
My dominant and bottom line feeling of life has been, ever since i remember myself, devastation.
Devastation means: all life is destroyed. It’s over. I am dead.
It’s that dread you feel when things go bad. It’s heralded by that anxiety every time you need to do something new, especially when someone is watching.
In your case, maybe it is finding out, finally, that you are really worthless, or stupid, or unloved.
It’s all the same. It is a version of devastated.
It said: life is over. The end. Koniec. Death.
What you have never stopped to notice that it never is. You are still here, breathing, hoping, and doing stupid things.
So I have been experimenting with this for years now, and I have come to the conclusion that without conscious thought, without consciously noticing that the devastation is setting in, I will never go beyond.
But life is beyond that point. Life happens when you go beyond that point, instead of stopping like you have been doing.
But it needs conscious thought… awareness, and knowing that it’s a pattern.
It is in every area of life, relationships, money, work, health… it is everywhere, and it is unacknowledged, unnoticed as a pattern: it is being honored as the truth. Every time.
Everything feels like “it’s over!” gasp…
If and when you internalize that this is a pattern to keep you the same, to keep you small, you can stop and look. Bring “consideration” and consider that it’s temporary… and it is up to you whether you run, react, yell, apologize, or quit… or wait and wait until the crisis goes away and you can start seeing clearly again.
I have a student who has a thousand posts on our 67 coaching forum, while others, same time members, have half of that.
60% of her posts are knee jerk reactions, permanent utterances for a temporary emotion.
Is she worse than you? No. She is just more vocal… you do this same thing in the privacy of your own head.
The result is the same: the life of a quitter. You quit ten-twenty times a day. Small tasks, small quits, small defeats.
But those make up your life. Some victories, and thousands of defeats.
You are doing the same thing, because you have never recognized the pattern. You know there are no monsters under the bed, but yet every night you cry out to your mother to check it.
It is time to grow up.
Read the original article: Never practice surgery on your family and other lessons for life…