"The world is full of lonely people, all isolated in a private, secret dungeon." - Loretta Girzartis "There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them." - Phyliss Bottome "More fearful demons live in our imagination than ever lived on earth." - Brad Brown |
Finding OurselvesWe all have hang-ups, guilt and doubts about ourselves and how we are living our lives. Finding Ourselves is where I want to help you see inside yourself. Each time I will pick a topic that I see that many of you are asking about, doing or don't understand. I want to teach you why this behavior is happening, what brings it on, what is behind the behavior and how you might find positive ways to handle your lack of control, your frustration, pain and confusion. Remember your 'behaviors' are 'symptoms' not causes. I want you to remember no matter what you are doing, have done or are thinking of doing it is not your 'fault', because you learned how to react. This is not 'you'. But now you are growing up and you are responsible for all of your actions and the consequences they bring. And you will, no matter what you think, pay for your actions one way or another. Learn how to make your consequences work for you so you can be and get what you want. You can have so much power over your life it is amazing; the difference in a winner and a loser is how you see and act on your behavior. (Click here to choose a different article from the archive...) Did You Know - What You Think Is What You Are? We all have a certain way of thinking that was formed by the way that our parents or whoever raised us, talked to us. We take in what is said to us by the most powerful influence over our lives, which is whoever raises us. Again, we are born with our minds being a clean slate. We have our own personalities and genetic makeup but as far as the way we "think", that is taught to us by the way our parental figures treat us. That is why it is so important to look at the way you are now, but realize that you have to go back to childhood to find the patterns that are playing out in your life. As adults we just repeat these same patterns of behavior and take over validating them to ourselves just the way our parental figures taught us.You need to look at a pattern of behavior that you want to change, say for example, you talk negatively to yourself. By that I mean you do something and the outcome is not what you wanted, so you then tell yourself how "stupid" you were and how "you will never get what you want". This is "parent" talk that was said to you when you were young whenever you did something that your parent did not approve of or felt you failed at. Again, the roll of parent is a very powerful role and it has the most extreme effects on all children. We learn how to love from our parents, this includes who we are, what we are, whether we are worthwhile or not and how we feel about ourselves. These are the "definitions" we believe and act out on in our daily lives as adults. It is important for each of us to look at this power as a child and as a parent, so you can see how much power we all have over our own children if and when we have them. Realize that what you say to your children are repeated beliefs that your parents taught you. This is how we carry on family issues and unhealthy patterns of behavior. Now back to the way you were talking to yourself when something did not work out the way you wanted it to. When you say these negative adjectives to describe yourself they are familiar and that gives them more power over your beliefs about yourself. Because they are so familiar consciously you might not feel the "assault" that these destructive messages place on your mind, body and spirit. But we do feel all negative and destructive behavior as "assaults" and we react to them in some way be it physically maybe as an illness, mentally as anxiety. If you were talked to this way as a child, then when you are an adult you will continue to talk this way until you make a conscious effort to change the messages that you say to yourself. These messages are familiar and you dont feel the negative affects that they have on your person because you have heard them all your life and have integrated them into who you are now. If you pay attention to yourself when you drop something, or trip or do anything that upsets you, stop and listen to the way your voice talks to yourself. This is your parental voice. If you listen and pay attention to what you are saying to yourself you will be able to pick out your parental pattern of behavior. I can hear my fathers voice as if he was right there saying what I was saying to myself when there is a behavior pattern that I have not confronted yet or have not replaced with a positive and loving belief. By stopping and getting familiar with these ongoing repetitive patterns you will be able to become quite familiar and sensitive to these adopted behaviors in yourself. Now you are aware of how you get your negative and destructive behavior patterns and how they play out in every part of your being and life. Our parents didnt mean to hurt us or pass down these destructive behavior patterns, they couldnt help what they themselves only learned through the way their parental figure talked to them. We dont need to blame anyone for our behavior patterns, we are adults now; each and every one of us is accountable for our own actions. This includes changing any negative or destructive patterns of behavior. But now we have progressed in human behavior to the point that we now know that each person can be aware of their own patterns of behavior and that changing these patterns is definitely in each persons power. We do not have to repeat these same behaviors in ourselves and in our children. One of the "fundamental truths" of the "natural laws" is that our minds, our bodies and our spirits are "naturally" attracted to what is positive, loving and peaceful. It is a basic concept we all need to learn because this "natural law" carries with it the ability to teach us what is within our power to control and what is outside of our control. I will write on that next week because it really is the bottom line to all of our lives, how to make our lives the way we want them, how to change them and how to become who we really are inside of ourselves. For now just understand that this fundamental law of nature is only attracted to beliefs that are positive, loving and take us towards peace and that all negative, destructive, hurtful and sabotaging behaviors are coming from the behaviors we were taught as children and they are not our own. To understand this concept gives each of us power over ourselves and the potential to change any pattern of behavior we want to in ourselves. So, when you say something negative to yourself in any way stop and remember that your mind, your body and your spirit by "natural law" will only be attracted to positive, loving and peaceful thoughts and patterns of behavior. You then stop yourself and say I know that this negative thought is from my parental figure and it is not mine. I dont like to think this way or talk this way to myself so I am going to replace this destructive pattern of behavior with a pattern of behavior that is mine and leads me towards positive, loving and peaceful beliefs about myself. When we break this concept down to its simplest form, ANY THING that we believe and tell ourselves that is destructive or negative in ANY WAY, these are not our own thoughts and beliefs. We can be assured that we definitely do not really feel this way, we are just "reacting" unconsciously to the situation. Now that we know this and what the natural law is that governs this fact, we know we have the ability to change these thoughts and beliefs to thoughts and beliefs that "ARE" ours and come by us naturally. This is what it is all about learning the natural laws and learning what is within our power to change and what is not within our power to change. Then we can focus on changing what we can and learning how to work with the things in life we can not change. Those things fall under the natural law of " Recognizing what we can not change in life whilst realizing that we do have the power to control how we react to these unchangeable situations." We will deal with that law of nature in a later writing. Become aware of the different voices in your head and what they are saying to you in any given situation. Then try to place each voice to the person it belongs to. Try to identify "your voice" in your mind and learn what it says and how it speaks to you. It would not be abnormal if you can not find your voice, as it will be the most silent voice within your mind. In fact your true self may not even have a voice yet. If you can not be sure of which voice in your mind is definitely "your voice", let that go, we will work on that step later. Do remember your voice no matter how weak or soft it may be is the voice that tells you anything positive, loving or moves your thoughts and behaviors towards a peaceful resolution. Try to identify all of the other patterns of thoughts and behaviors that you think, speak and that you act on. It would be of benefit to know who each of these patterns belong to so that you can understand what kind of influence they have over how you feel and see yourself. This is where we learn to dislike ourselves and mistreat ourselves. Which means we definitely have the power within us to change how we view ourselves and how to change any of our destructive behavior patterns. Remember that any kind of change is threatening to us so it will definitely feel uncomfortable to think about giving up a well known pattern of behavior no matter how negative and destructive it is. It is human nature to stay with anything that is familiar and comfortable even if it hurts us. That is one of the reasons I want to talk about the fundamental "natural laws". If you know this "natural law" and can see it proven and know that it will work every time you follow it, you will have something of certainty that you can hold on to while you are trying to get yourself to change a comfortable and safe but destructive behavior pattern. Natural laws are guaranteed truths that if you test them they always come true and work the same way every time. These natural laws are the "keys" to taking your power back and having control over your life. That is why I believe so much in this way of thinking; I can prove and have proven that everything I write really works and is guaranteed to work if you follow all of the rules and trust 100% in yourself. That is what makes all of this so safe it all comes from within you, you are not "believing someone elses philosophy or someone elses beliefs. These "natural laws" have all been proven many thousands if not millions of times and they work the same way every time. Since they are "natural laws" they are all from the true nature of ourselves and not man made. You are not accepting anything that is outside of your own being and your own beliefs. By the way I have found it to be of great benefit to keep a journal as I work on this journey of making my life work for me and changing MaryAnne into who she really is. One, it always helps to see things in writing. We are able to pick up on patterns, thoughts, behaviors we may have not noticed if we hadnt written all of this down. And when you work on a change it feels good to read what you did to change the pattern and the positive results. It is a special way to give yourself the positive reinforcement you need for every thing you do for yourself. I also share my journey and my changes with one other person. This helps me get feedback on what I have done and to share how almost mystical the experience is. It never ceases to amaze me how these "natural laws" really do work every time and the results for me have been unbelievable and awesome. |