My clients have a common theme that threads its way through their lives. Thoughts and behaviors that consistently evoke undesirable outcomes, that create anxiety and disrupt healing and growth is a pattern they all share. Our beliefs, how we think about and perceive ourselves and the world around us are established early in life.
Usually by the time we are 5-6 years old we have gathered and learned everything that substantiates our core beliefs. Imagine, here you are with those beliefs that were filtered through the cognitive lens of a child whose brain was not fully developed and you are now trying to navigate the world and thrive. You might imagine how our past can influence the present.
Those early perceptions may have been helpful once for our survival, but for many of us, they do not serve us well as adults. The past can predict our future if we allow it to.
Here is where our journey together might begin. Everyone needs a mentor.
Learned resistance, for our purposes, is experienced as the avoidance of new behaviors that challenge the status quo. We default to what is familiar and comfortable. When an action that can contribute to the creation of new paradigms, a new sense of ones-self or empowerment, is directly met with inaction, this behavior can be observed as resistance.
Everyone knows this feeling. Procrastination comes to mind. It serves to defeat our future self and deflates our ability to grow and change. When we are in this state the world moves around us like the shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave. Unengaged, we find ourselves lethargic and indifferent to the world around us.
This kind of isolation can deafen our senses and create in us feelings of being incomplete and inadequate. Resistance of this kind is the enemy of personal evolution. We are inherently designed to experience the world on a completely different level, in another way entirely. This resistance, as an approach to life, can be thought of as a learned, defensive behavior. Unlearn it!
Commit to change by taking action. Try this simple little exercise. The next time you find yourself day dreaming about some important aspect of your life being different and better than it is, currently, write it down. Write the dream or thoughts down in detail. Then every time it reoccurs write down the time and place and anything new that comes up. (You’re going to need a notebook) Take time and do it. What is it, a few moments or so?
We easily spend and waste hours of our lives starring at screens outside of the workplace. Redirect some energy! What does this accomplish? First, it interrupts your process of letting the thoughts go without a response and creates a potential through the act of being recorded. Second, when we begin to write about something it requires actively accessing our belief systems as we interpret and describe the subject at hand. As your mentor I want you to be actively challenging those systems. Act!
Those two things, together, establish a new paradigm and are a far cry from allowing ourselves to drift in and out of idle, non productive day dreams. (Don’t interpret daydreaming as all negative. They can also be very healthy and pleasant for us also!)A step such as this can begin to disrupt the routine that has thus far been defining your present and future self.
You can, or will, through repetition and consistency alter the known universe. You have the power, so redirect some energy. It’s good to think of energy as a resource to be deployed at will. Act! When we begin to focus in this way our dreams and aspirations gain depth and new dimensions as they are continually being explored and processed. They can, in fact, become a reality.
Dream, write, reflect…repeat. Disperse the clouds.
Another way to begin to exert your self is to investigate and respond to blogs. Interact and contribute to ideas. Develop your communication skills. Put yourself out there. In order to alter the direction we find ourselves headed, we must be willing to, first, adopt new strategies.
It’s interesting to observe how doubt can consistently get in the way of willingness and progress. The first new strategy is to take actions that attack our uncomfortable feelings towards what is new and unfamiliar. These are actions that are still moderate enough not to paralyze us. In this fashion, life begins to present new possibilities.
This is another small step towards self discovery. Contribute to a dialogue. Participate in the world of ideas.
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