Did You CHOOSE Everything That’s Occurring In Your Life?

Hello Love!

If you missed it, last week we started our exploration on why believing that everything that's occurring in our reality is happening specifically to help us 'become' who we're 'supposed' to become. I was talking about how believing this makes perfect sense for as as meaning making machines, and why this idea that we can use what we've gone through as an opportunity for growth instead of allowing our circumstances to crush us can be a really healthy and helpful thing. I also explored where this idea can get us into trouble and how to not let it become a superstition that blocks us from caring for ourselves the way we really need to be cared for.

If you missed it, you can read it here.

Today I want to deepen this exploration by looking into the idea that all things in our reality are happening BECAUSE of a CHOICE we made. I want to explore why taking responsibility for the patterns in our lives is a VERY good thing, but why when we take this idea to its extreme - when we assume that ALL things are happening because of a choice on our part - we're actually going to trap ourselves in a very disempowered state. Which is the exact opposite effect that we're usually going for when we buy into an idea like this.

Let's dive deep together so we can see where 'taking responsibility' for the outcomes of our lives is really helpful, and where it's actually harmful.

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Did You CHOOSE To Have Everything You Have In Your Life?

Next, if we assume that we created all of our circumstances through choices, and thus believe that if we continue to make better/different choices one day we can FIX or HEAL all things - again we are going to be in a state of massive reality denial.

To believe that we created any tragedy or hard time we face - be that a loss of a loved one, someone taking advantage of a vulnerability we couldn’t have done anything about, someone in our lives going through something that deeply affect us, to experience a natural disaster or a health crisis, to go through multiple out of our control setbacks that lead to a mental/emotional dive - means that we’re going to be blaming ourselves for that which we have no ultimate control and we’re going to be continually looking to micromanage our behavior and ways of being to try to prevent future pain when in fact, this micromanaging actually serves to make us more miserable vs. actually preventing misery and pain. When we are constantly looking for the ‘cause’ within OURSELVES we are always going to be missing a large piece of reality and in an attempt to give ourselves autonomy we’re going to actually be taking the freedom we genuinely DO have away from ourselves. 

When we believe that our ENTIRE current experience is based on only that which we HAVE control over, again, we're not looking at reality. Our current experience is always going to be a mix of things that we chose and that we participated in AND things that have nothing to do with our choices.

When we try to micro-manage our happiness by only focusing on what we have control over, we're going to have pain and discomfort coming from that which we DON'T have control over, and we're not going to be able to fully address and process that pain and discomfort because we won't be allowing ourselves to look at it.

Thinking that we can create a perfect experience for ourselves by only looking at what we have control over doesn't actually give us MORE power, it denies the power we DO have to work WITH the circumstances we aren't choosing.

We're then going to get into a state where we attempt to micromanage what we do have control over, thinking that if we do this enough, eventually we will get rid of all the pain in our lives. But this again is like eating every time you're tired. You can't eat enough to make your fatigue go away. You can't micromanage what you have control over enough to make the pain of that which you don't have control over go away.

When we deny those things that we don't have control over in favor of taking more and more control over what we do have the power to change, we're going to frustrate ourselves. Because no matter how much we change and optimize what we CAN, it won't remove the pain coming from that which we can't control.

The more we deny the pain coming from what we can't control, the more we're going to get lost trying to control what we can that isn't causing pain - leading to obsession - and the more we're not going to be able to actively problem solve and find real solutions for and within that which is out of our control.

Sometimes we are absolutely the cause of the repetitive patterns in our lives or of our own downfall.

Sometimes it is our job to realize where we’re contributing to the outcomes we’re experiencing in our bodies, relationships, jobs, finances and so on, so that we can do what needs to be done to mature.

Sometimes we do have to recognize that what we’re currently doing, what currently feels natural and easy to us is a faulty program/something we’ve done while it was the best we knew to do - but that we need to upgrade now.

You see, even when we realize that we are the ‘cause’ of our own pain, this still has to be witnessed through the lens of compassion. It still has to be seen as us doing the best we know to do in any given time, with the tools we actually have. Even when we ‘know’ better, this doesn’t always mean we’re ready to ‘do’ better. When we can admit to ourselves that we are in fact playing a role in our own pain, and when we can have curiosity and compassion for the parts of ourselves that are leading the charge we will be better equipped to assess what we ACTUALLY need in terms of change and support so that we can grow into something better. 

Whenever we're contributing to our own pain, we’re always doing so with a positive intention.

The patterns we currently have fill a need, or are what we were trained to be/do in order to get along in the families and cultures we were raised in. None of us are simply CHOOSING to fuck ourselves over. None of us WANT to be in pain. Many of us do what we do because in the short term it feels good. In the short term it seems right. Because it’s literally what we’ve always done. Our bodies and nervous systems are fully adjusted to this way of being. Our awareness was limited and our ability to do something different was and is limited.

Getting ourselves to shift well worn patterns is difficult.

Awareness isn’t curative.

Discipline is hard.

So even IF we are causing our own suffering to some degree, we STILL need to come at that with the lens of understanding WHY we’re doing what we are from a place of compassion, so that we can figure out the needs we’re currently getting met in the way we’re doing things, and how we can meet those same needs in a NEW and BETTER way with new habits.

Then we need to understand that being as gentle and kind to ourselves as we attempt to shift our ways of being as we can is PARAMOUNT for success. The safer we feel with ourselves while we transition to a new way, the easier that transition will be. The more we go into guilt and shame, the more we go into fear, the more our bodies shut down and draw us to doing what we’ve always done. 

Safety is key when we want to change.

On top of this, we have to really get honest with ourselves that when we are looking for how EVERYTHING is because of us on some level - either because of our actions, thoughts, words, vibrations, karma or what have you, what we’re ACTUALLY doing is transplanting a childhood set of reasoning skills onto our adult reality.

Our Habits Weren't Always Selected Consciously:

When we are children, we have no concept of the greater world around us outside of the context of how it RESPONDS to us. Our caregivers, in our view, were the gatekeepers of our pain and pleasure - and even when this wasn’t TRUE to real reality, to US it appeared that they had the power to make all our pain go away and to give us all the pleasure we wanted if they so chose. We couldn’t understand that if we were sick and they didn’t make us feel better that it was because they actually didn’t have the power to do that. To us it may have appeared that they COULD have and just DIDN’T. We couldn’t perceive that our parents were separate people from us having their own experience, and that sometimes their responses and reactions to us had nothing to do with us or our behavior. It all felt like the world revolved around us and it was up to us to measure up to the standards of those around us in order to be understood, so that we would be cared for. At the same time, we weren’t able to understand our own needs, our own wants, our own pain and pleasure. All of our needs got met through our caregivers. Our first experiences with pain and pleasure were all within the context of a highly codependent relationship - our caregivers needed to understand us and they needed to meet our needs where we couldn’t. With this, we learned that our BEHAVIOR and how that behavior was perceived by our caregivers was the main driving factor in whether our experience was good or bad. We learned what we needed to do/be in order for our caregivers to care for and support us. We learned what we needed to suppress and stop doing in order to be loved. We learned deep in our bodies that love = provision. We learned to deny parts of ourselves and our needs in order to avoid being rejected, shamed, abandoned or abused and in this we learned to deny our actual needs in the hopes that this would lead to care overall. We got our wires crossed that it was our behavior that led to our outcomes, and that it was up to us to figure out what the right behavior was to elicit the best response.

Some of us would have learned healthy ways of understanding and meeting our own needs. To a degree all of us have learned how to interact with real reality vs. seeing everything we go through through the filter of being approved of/disapproved of/understood by others. But at the same time, many of us still carry a lot of superstition around why and how things happen in our lives. We still believe in a God or a Universe that’s watching our every thought and move and giving us our experiences based on our performance. We still believe to a degree that EVERYTHING is happening on some level due to us and our behavior - and this is something we need to grow out of.

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Let's take one more break here, and come back next week to wrap this up!

<3

Remember, you don't have to do this work alone!

This self love work can be really challenging.

It fly's in the face of everything culture teaches us.

Meaning, it can be really hard to remember to show up for ourselves, to learn how to validate our emotions, to stay in a state of self compassion and curiosity.

This is why I created the school - because when we do this TOGETHER, we usually find that we go a lot farther.

You don't have to do this alone, I and the other students are here to be supports for you along your path.

We're not here to be totally independent, and this path is about community just as much as it is about self empowerment.

So if you're feeling alone, remember there are people out there like you, who are doing this work too.

Come Join The Community Here!