Hello!
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read:

Part One

Part Two.

Now today we are going to finish looking at how our perception impacts us as we try to make life changes, and how we can support ourselves through changing our perceptions where we need to, so we can make the progress we want to make in life.

Back To Perception

For most of us, if we were to really take a step back and scrutinize our filter - we would come to see that a lot of the things we believe about ourselves and the world around us aren’t true. We would come to see that we have a lot of stories to justify why what’s happening is or isn’t - but we can’t actually be SURE that these stories are 100% TRUE. 

Looking at this, realizing this, scrutinizing this and then actually changing our way of life based on this scrutinization - is REALLY challenging because it destabilizes how we know to move through the world.

Our filter isn’t just helping us figure out what to do and what to believe - it’s telling us HOW to figure out what to do and what to believe! 

In reality, for most of us, even when we are attempting to do the work to challenge our beliefs and question our filters, when we are looking to expand beyond what we currently know/see and are trying to make change, we’re going to see that our minds FIGHT to hold onto what we already know.

Our minds FIGHT to hold onto whatever perceptions we currently have - even when those perceptions are painful and cause us to do things to ourselves and others that are harmful and even when the new perceptions we’re finding would lead to freedom and peace - because again, our minds want CONTINUITY, predictability and safety. Our minds don’t WANT to be changed, because again to our nervous systems this change reads as a threat to our safety and stability.

So even if our current belief systems tell us that we HAVE to predict the wants and needs of everyone around us, and that if we don’t we are bad and shameful - and this causes us to live in a constant state of anxiety and stress - and we learn that it can be ok to let other down, to let them meet their own needs, that it’s actually HEALTHIER for those around us to COMMUNICATE their needs vs. us predicting them and so on - our minds are going to look for all the reasons why that new truth isn’t true, why that new truth causes pain, why the old truth is better and why we should keep doing what we’re doing. The mind is going to fight for the old perception because we know what to DO and how to BE with the old perception. We can predict the challenges and the conflict and we have our way of managing. The new belief may set us free from the constant hypervigilance, but it would also lead to new relationship dynamics and having to figure out a whole new way of getting our needs met, getting love, defining ourselves and so on - and this would likely be very destabilizing and confusing - thus we are going to gravitate towards doing what we’ve always done because it’s SAFER and more PREDICTABLE than the new thing. 

We have to remember that changing our filter means changing our way of being - and that is rarely, if ever, a smooth transition. 

Usually when we are shifting foundational beliefs and moving in to new ways of being, we are GOING to run into challenges, conflit, people not liking what we’re doing, people not understanding and we are going to run into situations where WE don’t like the new outcomes and WE don’t know what to do - and thus it’s always going to feel ‘safer’ and ‘better’ to just stick with what we’re already doing, than to try to navigate the unknown of something different, especially when that something different isn’t immediately BETTER than what we had before - which most of the time, it won’t be!

On top of that, we are going to realize that we often live in the context of a COMMUNITY that all hold similar beliefs about the world as we do. We exist in relationships and relationship dynamics that are BASED on us acting in certain ways based on what we believe, and others acting in certain ways based on what they believe - and this is created a kind of ‘balance’ where everyone knows what their ‘role’ is, how to behave and where everyone feels a sense of relative safety in the idea that they can, more or less, predict the behavior of those around them. Even if that behavior isn’t ideal, there’s going to be a level of comfort in the fact that we know what to expect from others, and we know how we’re going to react and respond to them and vice versa. We have a ‘dance’ we’re doing with everyone around us based on the fact that we have a consistent belief system, they have a consistent belief system and we are all operating ‘as usual.’

When we change, this is going to disrupt that dance. 

This is going to change the balance. 

Sometimes the people around us are ok with that. 

Sometimes people adjust and are willing to work with us through the bumpy parts. 

Other Times, we are going to get pushback from those around us. 

We are going to be judged and criticized. 

We are going to be nit-picked and all that messiness that comes with changing how we live is going to be used as a reason for others to reject us, question us, shame us, guilt us or otherwise challenge and doubt us - and that is NOT going to feel good. 

People are generally going to be made uncomfortable by us changing - even if our changes don’t directly impact them - simply because to humans, change is scary! And this rejection, this doubt from others, this upsetting others - it can be INCREDIBLY challenging to face and work through and it can make us feel VERY unsafe and again, can drive us back to doing what we’ve always done because - of course! We want the stability!

Changing our perceptions means changing our foundations for how we move through the world. This is often what we NEED to do in order to make long term changes to our lives - but to underestimate the CHALLENGE of this is to sell ourselves short on the support we are likely going to need as we make these changes.

We have to remember that even when we discover that what we perceived before wasn’t true, and when that leads to a reality that is LESS painful than the one we had before, we are likely STILL going to have resistance to the new way, because it will be unfamiliar. It will be out of our comfort zone. We will find ourselves instinctually repeating old patterns in new systems and set ups. We will find ourselves looking to re-create our old environment in our new environment. 

THIS IS NORMAL and we need to be prepared for this.

We need to be able to witness this in ourselves, and to have LOTS of deep COMPASSION for ourselves when it happens.

We need to be able to COMFORT ourselves and not make too many huge changes all at once, and we need to have nothing but patience for the process.

To make it ok that we will waffle between the old and new way. That we will backtrack. That we will get overwhelmed or scared by the unknowns. That we are going to need to go SLOWER than we think we need to go and we will need to be extra kind to ourselves and maybe even reach out for extra support - especially if we are facing a lot of antagonism/push-back from those around us. We have to expect the voices in our heads that shame, blame and ‘what if’ is to come up and we must learn to hold those voices with love and not take them seriously.

THIS is a big part of change that we don’t want to overlook.

It’s all about learning to BE THERE for ourselves as we make these transitions - knowing that just intellectual understanding isn’t ‘it’. Seeing things is one thing, being able to LIVE them is a whole different thing - and that takes a LOT of self love.

Perception is a MASSIVE piece of this that we tend to overlook, and it has such a profound impact that to NOT look at it means that we’re going to be surprised when we make changes and the above things happen - and therefore we aren’t going to have the tools to work THROUGH the challenges that will come up, and it means that we are going to be more convinced than ever that we are just weak/lazy/incapable of making change OR that change is simply WAY TOO HARD - because we don’t understand what’s going on and why it’s happening.

Meaning that in order to make real, lasting changes to the way we are doing things in life, we often have to make chances to our foundational beliefs about ourselves and about the world around us - and doing this is HARD because it requires us to be able to do the work of SEEING our filters - our beliefs and assumptions - and it requires that we have the ability to challenge and question those beliefs, and it requires that we are able to hold onto a new perspective long enough without our minds moving us BACK to what we believed before to help us re-stabilize that we can make changes based on those new beliefs, and that we get good enough results from doing those new things to be motivated to keep being different! 

This is all incredibly challenging.

So you see, change isn’t something we should expect ourselves to do with little to no effort, or with grace and ease just because we understand intellectually that it would be good for us. 

Shifting our perceptions is paramount to long term change, and it requires SLOW movement and progression towards new routines - and being as kind to ourselves as possible along the way.

Looking For The Easy Way

Next, we have to realize that when we’re wanting to change, there is a massive tendency in our human nature to underestimate the path that we are going to have to walk to get where we want to go.

In other words, when we are making changes to our lives that are NEW to us - meaning we don’t know what the path looks like because we’ve never walked it before - or when we’ve never been able to sustain the changes we are attempting to make - we have to realize that in reality, we likely have little idea what the path is going to require of us.

We’re often going to assume that we DO know what the path is going to look like, we are going to have our expectations set and we’re going to be prepared for reality to go how WE think it SHOULD go - and this is usually going to lead to us feeling like life is going wrong/something is happening that shouldn’t be happening/something isn’t happening that should be happening when we ACTUALLY start walking and what we are confronted with isn’t what we expected it to be.

Which is going to lead us to doubting the path, wanting to give up, assuming that what WE think is right and continuing to try to force reality to align with our expectations vs. adjusting ourselves to align with what’s actually happening, thinking there’s no way we can achieve our goal and all sorts of other mindset issues that will make making progress SO much harder.

Again, this is all natural. We all assume we understand reality and we all think that we have a good idea of what the future is going to look like. When we are attempting to make change ALL of us are going to have a plan in mind because OF COURSE! If we don’t have ANY plan or ANY idea of what we’re going to have to do to move ourselves forward we would be fully stuck.

But we have to balance this natural tendency towards assuming we know what the path is going to look like with the expectation that it likely is going to be challenging in ways we DON’T expect, and that we are going to face things on the path we had no idea were coming, that we don’t know how to handle and that we are going to have to figure out as we go.

Being able to recognize that we have an expectation of how the path is going to look is a massive first step.

So with any change you want to make in your life - can you take a step back and really explore what you THINK is going to happen on your way to your destination? What you think the end goal is supposed to look like? What you think the path is going to look like?

Can you take some time to become AWARE of your expectations?

Can you write them down so that you are fully bringing them into the light?

Take this time. Really unpack what you think the path is going to be. Open up to investigating your own assumptions - this is going to make CHANGING these assumptions to match reality SO much easier - because at the end of the day it’s really hard to change something we don’t even see.

Next, we want to open up to the idea that life is likely NOT going to go how we expect it to go.

We need to be aware that there are going to be challenges, steps, road-blocks and bumps that happen on our path that we didn’t see coming - that ARE part of the path but that weren’t part of what WE thought the path would be.

These are the challenges that make most people quit and give up - they assume that something has gone ‘wrong’ or that this is a sign that what they want is unavailable/the path is impossible. Or they assume that if they keep doing what THEY think they should do, keep trying to follow THEIR plan, that one day reality will relent and morph into what was expected.

This is what we want to avoid.

We want to be able to come to a space of openness to REALITY - to see that if what is occurring ISN’T what we thought would occur, that this doesn’t mean life went wrong or that we can’t have what we want - it means WE need to adjust our expectations to match reality!

Being able to take on the challenges that come up on the path and rather than assuming reality is going wrong or that we are trapped now because we didn’t expect to have to face this or that challenge, being able to shift into a state of curiosity around what’s happening, what we need to learn and assuming that there IS a solution and that there IS a way even if we don’t see it yet will give us SO much more traction than shutting down or continuing to try to force life to be what we think it should be ever will.

Being able to slow down and re-assess as we walk the path, being able to be open to the reality of the path even when it differs from what we thought it would be and being able to problem solve as we go, assuming that reality is right and thus if we aren’t getting what we expected we need to change our expectations vs. expecting life to change to match our expectations will give us a huge leg up on the path.

Thus, when unexpected steps, challenges, roadblocks or outcomes happen on your path forward, can you slow down, understand that this is just life being how it ACTUALLY is, and realize that you can shift your perception to match reality, vs. asking reality to match your perception?

Would you be open to leaning INTO the unknown - embracing the fact that right now you’re not clear on why what’s happening or not happening is or isn’t happening, you weren’t expecting this challenge and embracing all that you FEEL about it - WITHOUT letting it be a reason to give up or keep pressing on ahead as you were pressing on before?

Can you allow yourself to learn something NEW in this challenge, vs. assuming life went wrong or shutting down?

This step of opening to the unknown and opening to learning is KEY - when reality throws us a curveball, can we OPEN to it vs. assuming it means we can’t move forward or that life is getting it wrong?

If you can EMBRACE the challenge with curiosity - you may be surprised at how much faster you’re able to make progress and at the progress you’re able to make!

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Fewf! That was a lot!

Let’s take a week to digest this, and come back next week for more on supporting ourselves THROUGH challenge instead of being stuck looking for an ‘easy’ way that doesn’t exist.

<3

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