SUMMER SHORTS: What You Don’t Realize About Change Can Slow You Down.

Deliberate change requires more than a sprinkle of our attention.

Making changes asks for all of who we are, everything we’ve got. We must pay attention. We must do things we’ve never done before. We must wake up where we were once asleep.

Making a change changes every part of us.

To shift, I must actually become the person who can perform a new action (make easy meals for myself), express a new quality (remain kind under stress), develop a skill (sing for a live audience) or be relaxed and confident (in the highly emotional atmosphere where I work).

To change, I must become the person who thinks and feels in a way that matches what I’m asking for.

Let’s all pause for a deep breath here. Change requires a great deal. Being who you are now (staying the same) is deeply rooted, even more than you might realize.

Physical body processes that help memorize a rote task are certainly a handy feature when learning to play a bassoon. But these same processes create challenges when it comes to changing a habit, a pattern of thought, or a way of being with myself or my partner.

You probably don’t realize how automated you are. Every part of your system works together to learn a process and remember how to do it.

Researcher Joe Dispenza says, “This means that for those of us over 35, we have memorized a select set of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us. Those programs are running us, because the body has become the mind. This means that we will think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, react in identical ways, behave in the same manner, believe the same dogmas, and perceive reality the same ways. About 95 percent of who we are by midlife is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic—driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy, just to name a few.” Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

The next time you feel stuck in your life, remember that changes require new choices. What is one small thing you can do today that will make your life better, according to you? Do that. Stick with that one thing and see where that leads you. I predict that the results will surprise you.

Making any change ushers us into the unknown, which is where magic happens. How ever your change experiment turns out, I’d love to hear about it!

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

100 Words: Small Servings of Whimsy and Wisdom to Calm the Mind and Nourish the Heart., change, In Care of Relationships, making shanges, Summer Shorts, Terri Crosby, Why Change Is A Little Harder Than Picking Daisies

Comments (4)

  • “Change is the constant!” Sometimes you choose it. Sometimes, well, for better or worse, it chooses you. Who would EVER choose cancer, a change that is so profound, it’s not even possible to grasp? But therein lies the opportunity. So I am working now to “Stick” with (and return to again and again) the gifts that lie within a life-change that I never chose. But despite the suffering, cancer, I have discovered, is not all bad. Really! (You know all about this journey.) And therein lies the gift. If one can remain open to the possibility, there is expansion of gratitude, broadened awareness of how loved we are, astonishment at how resilient the heart and soul can be, acknowledgement of the strength and persistence of the physical body and more that I have yet to discover. Now, more than ever, I need my closest loved ones to hold my hand through it all. The shift is in the reaching……

    • Jane, what a beautiful note from you. Gifts are everywhere, all the time, if we have the ears to hear and the eyes and heart to see, and clearly, you do. I’m reading a book right now by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest whose life and livelihood is smack in the middle of opposing Latino gangs in LA. Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, who employs gang members, specifically to give them a way out of violence and desperation. He has done hundreds of funerals for gang members in his time there. He tells story after story of how there’s redemption in everything, that one light will change even overwhelming darkness and that love is everywhere. Thank you for expressing your thoughts. I’ll be in touch.

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