When I look at the cycles that we perpetuate, I think its a really good idea to question how much control we have over them. I know in my own experience how easy it is to walk around with the idea that I am in control. But am I really ?
Not even looking at the outside, but just my own personal patterns. Can I really stop them if I wanted to? The answer for most of us if we look carefully is a definitive No. There are habitual ways of being that run us. Patterns that we can’t control but we fool ourselves into thinking we can if only we apply a little more will or if we really had to get ourselves in gear.
But will power doesn’t attend to the underlying reason that the behavior is there in the first place. We have pause and go a little deeper with this. Ignore the symptom for now and look at what drives the behavior.
From this place we can be in relationship with the unwanted pattern or behaviour without condemning ourselves for having it. We are no longer saying it shouldn’t be this way or I should have more control over it.
Rather, with kind attention and acceptance we look at what motivates us, which usually stems at the core from what we didn’t get in childhood. Those wounds shape varying degrees of somewhat broken adult personas that go out in the world and unconsciously look to soothe those wounds. If we hold the behaviour with kind attention, we can begin to move towards the roots of why we do what we do.
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