Did you know that at your very core, the essence of who you are, you are beautiful, full of love, endless patience, care and kindness to name a few. The big question is, what blocks the conscious awareness from this aspect of your nature? Snippets of this beautiful self will shine through in moments that somehow break through the monotonous routine of day to day life. The big question is, how does one make this the day to day norm?
Over our lifetime we develop emotional habits, defences, beliefs that are all geared to assist us to navigate the joys and the challenges of life. When an emotional experience is particularly intense, it is imprinted in the nervous system as a memory. Any experience forms a cascade of emotions, and the ones that are outside our norm stand out. If it is particularly unpleasant, we may make adjustments to our internal belief systems and world view. As more and more of these negative experiences happen, and particularly if we ruminate on them, we start to form an emotional habit or even addiction to these emotions. As discussed in Breaking the Habit of being yourself, by Dr Joe Dispenza, the gap between what we present to the world and how we really feel widens. On the surface we may smile and yet underneath harbor feelings of sadness, anger, isolation. The more we hide and ruminate on negative feelings, the gap between our internal world and what we present widens.
Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha always teaches the importance of being transparent by bringing to the foreground and being honest about these feelings and thoughts that are so often hidden. I believe the first person we need to be honest with is ourselves. In order to gain more self-awareness we can journal these feelings and thoughts through free writing or conscious streaming. Also doing an inward mindfulness focus will also expose the feelings and thoughts that dominate the subconscious. With awareness and honesty comes choice. Using the power of the frontal lobe, we can vision a new version of ourselves and by actioning, this persons becomes the new habitual self. The more we can visualise, act out and practice the new feelings and thoughts and demonstrate them in our lives, the more this way of being becomes programmed in the subconscious. That means we become emotionally addicted to the new way of being. Did you know it only takes 28 days for our cells to replicate. That means in 28 days we can form an new emotional and psychological habit. By getting off automatic pilot, and back in the driving seat, we can engineer our life, our thoughts, feelings, experiences and relationships to be as we vision it and not the result of past experiences.
By Marianne Love