I was happy when I finally made the last post and I was hyped to keep writing articles on my blog here, thinking how I will eventually grow my profile. I thought to myself how I should write every week at least one post.
However, after promoting it for the first few days, I noticed that I'm kind of pushing the job for later. Even when I put it on my to-do list, I somehow end up with not enough time to do it. But I think there is a different reality hiding beneath that. The thruth is that my mind became an expert in deceiving me and not making me do things I know would be good for me.
This beutifully (although not) brings us to our next topic, which has to do with the patterns that keep running us and make us stay small and comfortable, probably because of some early wound or beliefs that were forced upon ourselves.
Identifying those patterns for yourself will provide you with great insights, while making a path to let go a lot easier, so you could brush off your past story and get completely unaffected by it.
The huge pattern in my life has the main goal of not letting me succeed (I'm the greatest, but subconscious keeps fucking me up), and so whenever things start getting good, when I start rolling, I somehow find something bad about that thing, and really smart excuse not to continue with it and see how far I can reach.
It happened with handball, waterpolo, guitar-playing, college, dating, you name it! Whenever I would notice that I'm finally getting somewhere, that I'm actually good and should step it up, I would immediately find a way to stop it. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I was aware of doing this. As a matter of fact, I only noticed this pattern after I "got in touch" with myself last year while at the same time reflecting on my past..
Now, while many people share this pattern, there are also many other ones that might be harming your own growth, depending in what environment you were raised and what experiences you went through, mostly as a child.
For example, some of you may have a pattern of taking in too much work, and then burning yourself out and not finishing any of it. Maybe, you're working your ass off constantly and feel very bad for taking a time off, relaxing and enjoying yourself. Maybe you keep bouncing off people because you can never fully open up to somebody and get very close with them because at some point, it probably costed you a lot.
The bad thing is that this pattern is probably imprinted to your subconscious so far, and might continue to run your life, but the good thing is that if you recognize the pattern, you could put in a conscious effort for it not to run you. And even better, some meditation-methods can bring you to a state of fully experiencing the causes of the pattern, arising very intense emotions with it, but in the end, dissolving the power of the pattern completely and letting you off the hook.
These causes I'm talking about are so called "traumas". Trauma is an experience that caused you to repress some event because it was too much for you to handle in that moment. You repressed its memory because as a kid you have a very limited perspective on things and on the other hand, you view authorites in your life as a god who will throw you in hell if you fuck something up.
It may also be caused because the social setting you were in did not allow for expression of "negative" feelings so you would stuff everything down not to become vulnerable and as a result, never really faced them.
Why I made Scarcity vs. Abundance post
I made it to introduce you to all of this, and if you havent, PLEASE check the post out. I talked about how whole society is built upon the scarcity paradigm.
The world has turned into a place of treating the effects and giving you seven-hundred-8-million-fuck-knows-how-much ways to escape from your emotional baggage and to never be in a real environment of facing it. If you look at the people around you in a city, I think you will get what I'm talking about.
Adding to this, there is a habit of making people feeling bad about feeling bad, or even blaming yourself for feeling bad. I mean, it's ok to be empathetical, but you should let yourself and other people be congruent to their feelings and encourage them to experience them fully. Parents tell to their children, especially boys, "don't cry, you're not a baby!", "be a man", "just brush it off." As a result, we can't feel sad, it's uncomfortable to express fear, people put on pretentious smiles, etc.
Ok, I'm going into a society rant again, khm,mm.
It's important to notice to what extent you're living your life to escape and to avoid facing some of the most important "issues" you could face. But this is actually a badass way of identifying what we're trying to get at here. Next time when you hop onto your computer to blindly surf the web, or when you binge eat, try becoming mindful and really sink into your sensations.
How does it feel in your body to do this? Can you acknowledge what you're trying to distract from? What if you acutally spend a little time "in there?"
Beware if something is triggering you in that moment and if you're just using a compulsive activity to stuff it down and to turn your attention somewhere else, preferably of course to an experience that provides you with pleasuring stimulus.
How to identify?
Ok, so what is the actual way of identifying the toxic patterns that keep running you? Well, one way was just being described here, that is, catching yourself while being engaged in addictive, compulsive behaviours and then questioning whether you are trying to run away from something. But there are also a few other ways of identifying what patterns are letting you down the dead path of your subconscious.
One that definitely everybody should do is reflecting back on their childhood. This is really a pain in the ass, especially if you had a pretty shitty experience growing up. However, this is one of the best and most constructive ways to identify the toxic patterns.
Make sure to occasionally take time with yourself to sit down and start thinking about experiences that made impact on you during your childhood. What were some of the bad moments, some moments in which you were hurt, the moments in which you were shamed and others were maybe mocking you?
Really dive into it, mindfully and non-judgemental. Forgive yourself for everything bad you did, and try to surrender yourself to the situations you were in that were really uncomfortable. After a while you can ask yourseff, did I bring any of that burden with myself throughout my life?
Have I actually let go of some of these feelings and continue to live life in my own way? Or am I still living in a reaction to some of these events?
In what ways am I still run from these experiences and is it actually harming me in a long run?
Take your time on this and be honest with yourself. This is painful to do, you will have tons of resistance, but it's totally worth it and can have amazing impact on the quality of your future life!
(Please remind yourself of doing this and don't just go through content to take it information and stay the same person)
Third way of doing this is by actually trying to trace some of the patterns and look directly at them. Do you tend to slack of at certain things? Are you always neglecting your dating life and afraid of pursuing relationship? Are you trying to be a perfect human being with no faults, although you keep fucking up and feel bad about it? Try to put your life into third person perspective, and ask yourself, what would this person immediately notice that's "wrong" with me?
What environments and situations do I keep creating so that I'm not facing some of my issues?
Here we go to triggers and fears. Fear is unbelievably valuable emotion that's teaching us life-saving lessons and telling us what should we stay away from. However, each of us have our own unrealistic fears about something. Frankly, you are better off being careful about lots of things, but no, you're freaking the fuck out and getting paranoid instead.
What situations, conversations, surroundings, environments are making you triggered? Is it when you speak up in front of a large group of people, is it when you're interacting with the authority? Is it hard for you to meet someone new? Are you terrified of failing at something? What is it that just makes you want to avoid the thing? Simply, what is it that makes you scared shitless?
It might be hard for you to answer this because we tend to create life environments which are safe for ourselves and where we even don't have the opportunity to get triggered, which might get us into thinking that we're fearless, while in fact we're brilliant at hiding from something that's making us uncomfortable. What's that thing for you and are you ready to finally slay it into pieces?
If you found one of your own patterns, good, you're on the right path, keep going. If not, dedicate yourself to be more with yourself and hear out what silence has to say to you. Try to see whether some patterns appear in your daily life, and notice how much it is.
If you would like to start dissolving them, spend more time in your body, not your, oooh, yes, forgot to mention, you may be addicted to your thoughts and in that way you could be escaping yourself too.
Although thinking deserves an article of its own and I think I could tackle that sometimes this decade :)
Something more you could do is mindful meditation where you sit with yourself and just observe the feelings and acknowlegdge them, being the space that's needed.
Also, start observing and FOLLOW how frequency of my posts is getting up ;)
I might take a little time and effort for my next post regarding this topic, so I will try to keep you in touch with more casual things and maybe a little shorter posts.
Have a nice day!!