May Polarity
May 30th, 2017 by Kimberly
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
via Gratefulness.org
Show of hands: how many of you are completely contented with yourself and your life and want to keep repeating all the same patterns you have now?
I think maybe one person out there actually raised their hand. Hand-raiser, I salute you. You keep doing you.
Okay, we get it, Zoe. Put your paw down now.
For everyone else who not only didn’t raise their hand but maybe even sat on their fingers and looked at the ground and started thinking about all the different things they’d like to change, I hear you. Most of us have at least a small thing we’d like to change, and all of us know the difficulty involved in making that happen. No matter how much you’d like to eat healthier food, that voice in your head insists on reminding you that you really do want fries with that. Or maybe it’s saving money or exercising more or learning to be a better listener. It’s really hard to change habits you’ve spent a lifetime reinforcing.
Once at the therapist’s office, we discussed my need to accommodate people even when it’s a big pain for me, and I mentioned my most recent failure to change my behavior. I told her that in the midst of doing so, I realized I was repeating the pattern, but I still couldn’t seem to change. Louise gave me a small smile and said that I had done the hard part. “When you’re aware of the behavior, then you can change. It’s when we do things without being conscious of them that we’re stuck.” That thought stayed with me. Now I recognized the pattern, had seen myself in it. The next time someone suggested a major adjustment to fit their life without seeming to realize that it inconvenienced me, I managed a response that was something less than a knee-jerk yes. It wasn’t a no, exactly, but you have to start somewhere.
When you know you want to change, accepting yourself and really loving who you are right now seems poles apart from who you want to become, but it may actually be the shortest route. Think about it – where has self-loathing ever gotten you, really, but deeper into trouble?
Kimberly likes to take the scenic route sometimes, but not when her self-esteem is at stake.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Or a bad habit, vice, etc. You can’t change for the better until you know what needs to change. But we’ve become such an outward-facing society, that not many people go inside themselves to sort it out any more.
Indeed. As Rumi put it, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” By doing that, we do change the world, but it’s hard to remember!
It wasn’t a no exactly….you make me laugh. And it is so true, start somewhere. 1st awareness and then less than a knee jerk yes! You do need my key chain:-) No, no, no! I said, NO!