There’s a big myth in the self help/spirituality world that tells us that transformation only comes when we are willing to take BIG scary steps, and when we are pushing ourselves as fast and as hard as possible.
Our culture is one that tells us that the most successful people are the ones who are ‘taking responsibility’ for themselves, who aren’t allowing themselves to be/stay ‘stuck’ in their lives and who are doing the most possible when it comes to taking control of their lives.
We are perpetually bombarded with the idea that more is better, that harder is better, and that if we aren’t changing and improving all the time that we’re failing in some way.
But the reality is, all of this goes against what’s actually true for us as human beings.
It goes against what is actually required for us to be able to change, what’s required for us to be able to make sustainable change, and what we actually need to feel supported in making changes.
Today we’re going to dive deep into what it really takes to make a permanent change to our way of being, and why going slow is actually going fast.
Because once we understand this, we can finally take the pressure off of ourselves to ‘get there as soon as possible’ and we can figure out what is really required of us if we actually want to grow in this life.
Same = Safe - Understanding Patterns
The first thing that we need to grasp if we really want to be able to support ourselves in transformation, is the idea that to our bodies/nervous systems sameness is what gives us a sense of safety and security.
Being in a familiar environment, being able to accurately predict what is going to happen around us, having a sense that we know how to react and respond to what is because ‘what is’ is how things have been for a long time - this gives us a feeling of power and agency.
We need to understand that no matter what our circumstances are like right now, if they have been ‘like this’ for a while, our entire beings have adjusted themselves to this, and our entire beings have learned how to adapt and what patterns to follow that allow us to get our needs met in the best ways that we can.
Throughout all of human evolution, we need to understand that that which was MOST threatening to us, was that which was unpredictable.
When we weren’t able to predict our environment, when we weren’t able to accurately understand and respond to what was happening around us in a way that allowed us to get our needs met and allowed us to have pleasure on some level - this is what usually led to our demise.
Our ancestors learned deep in THEIR bodies that the BEST environments were the most familiar ones, and that the most dangerous environments were the ones we didn’t understand.
That nervous system program was then passed through the years all the way to us in our current state.
This is why we seek sameness. Because for most of our evolution it was sameness and predictability that gave us the highest chance of survival.
We must acknowledge that whatever our current state, no matter how painful, disjointed, unproductive of otherwise harmful it may look and feel to be on the surface, there is always going to be a part of us that wants to STAY where we are, because, chances are, we have ADAPTED to our current way of life.
We know how to react and respond to the threats of our current way of being. We know how to get our needs met to a degree in this way of being. We know what’s coming, and we know what to do about it - what we’ve always done!
As painful or out of sync with what would ACTUALLY be most beneficial for us as our current way of life may be, change is always going to look and feel MORE threatening and MORE painful to us, because there will always be the fear that the new way could be WORSE for us than what we currently have. There is always going to be the sense that if we change, we will LOSE whatever stability, provision and safety we have in our current way of being. There will be a sense of no knowing how to react and respond, not knowing what’s going to happen, not knowing how to get our needs met and not knowing how to make ourselves safe in the new environment - even if the new environment or way of being is OBJECTIVELY safer, better or healthier.
This can be difficult for us to wrap our minds around when ‘what is’ is painful.
It can be really confusing to deal with the idea that we are going to resist healthy change, because on the surface again it’s going to seem so nonsensical.
But the truth is, how we are in our relationships right now and the kinds of people we are drawn to/repelled from, the ways we treat about bodies, the ways we think about ourselves and the perceptions we have about who we need to be and what we need to be doing to be happy, the kinds of jobs we choose, the ways that we cope, numb and stimulate ourselves, the ways we try to fix ourselves - all the patterns we have in our lives are there because they serve as our foundations of peace and predictability.
Even if they are deeply NOT peaceful and very chaotic - they are still OUR normal and OUR predictable. And THAT’S what makes them ‘safe’ to us.
Meaning there’s nothing wrong with you if you find yourself continually re-creating the same kinds of patterns in your life over and over again no matter how much you attempt to shift or change.
There’s nothing wrong with you if you find change really hard.
There’s nothing wrong with you if we find yourself repeatedly going back into your coping, numbing, self sabotaging and stimulating behaviors even when they hurt and harm you on some level.
There’s nothing wrong with you if you keep picking the same kinds of people to relate to over and over again.
There’s nothing wrong with you if no matter how hard you try, you can’t get out of your patterns - patterns you’ve likely had since childhood or early adulthood.
The patterns you have right now are how you know to get your needs met, and how you know to stay safe within a predictable environment.
Change Needs To Be Slow
From here, we have to understand that our current ways of being - no matter how harmful they may seem on the surface - are meeting needs for us.
They are helping us express, they are helping us find provision, they are giving us the ability to suppress things we grew up learning weren’t ok to express, they are how we are avoiding feeling - and thus if we want to create new habits that actually STICK, we are first going to have to figure out what the positive benefit of our current behaviors are.
At the same time, we have to recognize that sometimes the things we think are ‘wrong’ with us - the personality traits, the ways of being that we have been told our whole lives are wrong, bad and not ok - are actually who we ARE and not something that we need to fix - but rather are parts of self that need to be loved, accepted and embraced for who and what they are, and that need to be given space to grow and express in a healthy way.
Sometimes we aren’t actually doing something ‘bad’ or wrong - but rather we are being who we ARE and we have simply been conditioned that this isn’t ok/that others don’t like it - and that means we need to go on a journey of self acceptance.
In finding the benefits of our current behaviors and ways of being, we can start to implement NEW ways of being that generate the same positive outcomes, with less of the negative effects.
THIS is the trickiest part often, when we are working with trying to change.
A lot of the time it can feel like our habits are ONLY negative - we look at our overeating, overspending, zoning out in front of the phone for hours, we look at our communication style and so on - and we only see the pain that it generates.
We look at our ways of expressing, our patterns and our ways of being and think ‘if I could just get rid of this thing, everything would be perfect!
When in reality, if we were to actually take our habits away from ourselves - we would likely notice that a LOT of uncomfortable emotion and thought would come up. We would notice that we actually feel WORSE in a lot of ways. We will notice that when we try to alter our personalities and traits to match what’s expected of us, it feels good for a short period of time - but eventually it leads to more pain and struggle and a ‘rebellion’ back into habits/coping mechanisms and scapegoats/to us expressing who we REALLY are or how we ACTUALLY feel in explosive and sometimes out of control feeling ways.
Because habits and ways of being aren’t actually the problem - they are the SOLUTIONS we are using right now to try to deal with the underlying problem.
The underlying problem of a life that doesn’t feel good.
The underlying problem of having needs we don’t know how to get met in a truly productive way.
The underlying problem of not knowing how to process the emotions of what we’ve been through.
The underlying problem of not knowing how to express and communicate in a way that feels good for us.
The underlying problem of not knowing how to BE ourselves in a world that has told us we aren’t allowed to be who we are.
Thus again, in order to truly shift, we have to first understand WHY we are doing what we are, what purpose what we’re doing currently serves for us, and what we need to feel SUPPORTED.
We need to get to KNOW ourselves, vs. trying to ‘fix’ what we think is ‘wrong’ with us.
This can be a long process, and something that feels like it will take forever.
But this is the real benefit of learning those foundational self love tools of compassion and curiosity.
How Compassion And Curiosity Set The Stage
When we shift out of trying to fix ourselves, out of trying to figure out what’s ‘wrong’ with us so we can change, when we move out of the assumption that what we are doing is wrong/bad/harmful for no reason - and into the perspective that we are ALWAYS doing the best we can with what we know, with the information we have and with the awareness we have - we shift into a state of SAFETY.
As we were talking about in the first section - when we feel safe, when we feel like we are being seen, loved and respected, when we feel like we are FINALLY not being witnessed as ‘bad’, ‘wrong’ or as something that needs to be fixed in order to be good enough, there is going to be a deep feeling of being ‘ok.’
Because the reality is, the very first story any of us ever learned deep in our bodies was the story that when we are being LOVED, we are going to get our needs met.
This is because in our childhoods we were in a codependent relationship with our caregivers. We depended upon these external figures to meet all of our needs - to see us, understand us and to show up for us - and thus we learned deep in our bodies that when we are being witnessed, when we are being loved, when we are being supported that this is going to lead to us being provided for.
We learned that when we are being rejected, when we were being abandoned, when we were not being loved - that this was going to lead to us NOT getting our needs met and NOT being safe.
Thus, in our adulthoods when we feel loved, when we feel seen, when we feel supported and when we feel like we are being witnessed as GOOD ENOUGH - this triggers something deep in our beings that tells us that we’re going to be ok.
This shifts our bodies and brains into a state of ‘rest and digest’ - and from this space we are actually able to see more than we have ever seen, to understand more than we have ever understood, and we are able to make changes we have never been able to make before.
Because when we feel SAFE, that is when we feel free to explore and expand.
When we feel threatened, we want to hunker down and do what we’ve always done.
Thus, compassion is the first key to transformation.
Then, from that state of compassion - from that state of assuming we have a GOOD REASON for being what we are and for doing what we are - we can then lean into CURIOSITY. We can start to asses the REAL reasons for why we may be acting how we are, what we need, what we want, what we need to process, who we really are and what is required for us to feel supported.
We can lean into what our needs are and how we can start to evolve the ways in which we get them met.
Compassion shifts us into a state of safety that opens us up.
Curiosity helps us develop a much deeper understanding of why we are how we are and what we need - and this gives us the ability to create NEW habits - ones that actually feel good! - so that we never have to ‘fight with’ the old habits - we can just slowly replace the old habits with new ones that actually work and feel better.
THIS is the process of transformation.
Going Slow Is Going Fast
Now, this journey isn’t an easy one.
Those shame, blame and guilt stories that tell us that we are broken, that we are doing life wrong, that we aren’t who and what we should be - they are likely going to be very challenging to confront and to contradict.
Learning to be gentle on ourselves, learning to have compassion, learning to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt - this is all work that is going to take time and effort.
Learning to actually witness ourselves instead of going into a state of constant self improvement will take a lot of willpower and effort.
The slower we go, the more we allow for that ‘spiral’ of learning, where we feel like we are perpetually taking two steps forward and one step back, where we are noticing that we are going over the ‘same’ understandings and revelations over and over again, where we notice that there isn’t a straight line to awareness and healing but rather that it’s going to be a process that takes place over TIME - the faster we are actually going to progress.
This is because no matter how harmful or painful what we are currently doing may be on the surface, we have to remember that it’s our current comfort zone.
It’s where we know to be, it’s how we know to act, it’s how we know to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe and it’s how we know to get our needs met.
Our brains and bodies are NOT going to simply trust that doing something different is going to be ok.
Our brains and bodies are going to need a LOT of time to make adjustments to new awareness and to new habits - and they are going to need PROOF that the new way of being WORKS before they are going to become automatic ways of being.
We can’t actually rush this process.
Even the process of learning to have compassion instead of judgment towards ourselves is going to take time to adjust to. Many of us are going to notice a DEEP fear that if we are kind to ourselves that this is going to mean we ruin our whole lives, end up never being loved again and that it’s going to mean the end of joy as we know it.
There’s going to be a lot of resistance again, because we are doing what we’re currently doing FOR A GOOD REASON.
It’s what we learned we HAD to do and be to be SAFE.
So the harder we push ourselves to try to change before we’re ready, the more we’re going to notice that ‘slingshot’ effect of being pulled back into our old ways even HARDER than before.
Going slow, giving our brains and bodies time to adjust, being as gentle and compassionate with this process as possible IS the fastest way.
I promise you, it won’t take forever.
One step at a time, you will make progress.
Giving yourself space to process IS the key.
Slowly.
Gently.
Over time.
Giving yourself space is the best way to transform.
How does it feel to settle into this idea today?
<3
Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School.
The school is a 4-5 year self paced program that includes written lectures, videos, worksheets, practices and a community all designed to help you develop a clearer view of yourself, your life and reality at large so that you can better design a life that actually works for you!
