Paradigm Shift
Ego says “Once everything falls into place then I will find peace.” Spirit says, “when I find peace, then everything will fall into place.”
This statement greets me upon entering the Pilates/Yoga Studio where I am studying to become an instructor. It is the first thing you read as you descend the staircase to this quiet, zen and empowering space. Certainly seeing it there was not the first time I had read it, but reading it each day I walk into the studio has stuck with me. On the one hand, it reminded me of how far I have come in changing my belief system; on the other, how far I will always need to travel to more deeply heal and more readily believe.
The paradigm shift from happiness and satisfaction being from an outside influence to being an inside job was and is the biggest mindset shift I have had to make, and it is one that many of clients work through as well. The sense that it is an outside job is conditioning from as young as I can remember. Every achievement seemed to be tied to a feeling. If you get an A, I will buy you that toy. Listening to my mom conditioned most of my feelings about my looks and my weight. She always talked about her weight as being the opposing force in her life. If she got her weight under control then she would be happier. She was very critical about her own looks, always comparing herself to others. She picked on each thing that saw that was different; her deep set eyes, her longer nose, her thinning hair. I quickly learned that you will not be loved by a man if you are overweight. I quickly learned that comparing yourself to others and not liking what you see in the mirror was normal. I learned that to please others I had to achieve what they wanted me to achieve. It began my pursuit of achieving in order to be loved, liked, friends, etc. There was a time in my life when I thought people would only be friends with me if I could do things for them that may not or did not do for themselves.
These beliefs, this way of walking through the world, caused me to very often beat myself up if something went wrong in a relationship. This system also kept me from being truly happy and truly living my life. It was all about not disappointing others, doing for others and allowing happiness to come to me once I achieved something. I remember one of the many times I lost weight (I have lost the same 20 pounds over and over again!). I let a very good friend of mine know that I had hit 20 pounds that day. He quickly called me telling me just how proud he was of me, how beautiful I was and how committed I was to my health. That positive reinforcement was sweet, it also played into the belief system. If I continued to lose that weight, he would like me more, maybe even fall in love with me. Although that wasn’t why I wanted to lose the weight, it became the condition that I focused on, lose the weight and he will love you.
Shifting that thinking and that paradigm to more of what Spirit says is far from easy. It takes a lot of work to have faith in what we will attract by finding the feeling we want. Instead of saying, “when I lose weight, I will feel sexy,” the shifting paradigm would say “when I feel sexy, I will attract what is meant for me.” Or perhaps “when I feel that I am worth it, I will let go of expectations of others.”
As I delve into work to get beyond some of my current limiting beliefs, a big one has come up front and center for me. I have to make everyone around me happy to receive love. Read that again, I have to make everyone around me happy to receive love. When I don’t make everyone happy, I assume immediately that they do not love me anymore, that I fall down the list of people they care about, I am no longer important. I also worry about being ridiculed or embarrassed by making a wrong choice, too often I have had someone in my life tell me I am crazy for what I think or feel. I thought I healed these a long time ago, but they have risen again as I try to get the courage to move. I want to physically move where I live and at times I worry that my house will no longer be a gathering place. I feel like since I can bring people together here, they love to be here and thus love me. If I move, will they still love me? I also want to move on and date, but I am scared to do so. I am scared of the rejection and that little voice of the person who once said, “you are unlovable.” I want to move my business to another level so I can impact more people, yet that voice of “you aren’t good enough,” keeps popping up. If you stay right where you are Suzy, you are safe.
So this paradigm shift of feeling what I want to feel in order to attract what I want versus getting that feeling from others, is really timely and really important to my journey. Allowing myself to feel everything I feel right now is kind of messy, but is allowing me to be much more aware of what beliefs I still need to change.
What beliefs are holding you back? What beliefs to you hold that are conditional to outside influence? This could be our game changer.