“When Everything Feels Like An Uphill Struggle – Just Think of The View From The Top!
“Life is, after all, risky, delicate, temporary, and magnificent. ” Victoria Moran Creating A Charmed Life:Sensible, Spiritual Secrets Every Woman Should Know
What are the myths that you tell yourself, about who you are or what you can accomplish? What stories, both positive and negative, affect the outcome of your life’s path. These self created perceptions repeat over and over. We repeat them so much, we believe they represent an immutable reality. When reaching for a new paradigm you challenge these deep ruts of behavior and perception, & like a rubber-band they can stretch and then lash back if you do not maintain both new actions and new mindset. These “Back lashes.” feel then like a confirmation of the old paradigms which makes them that much harder to challenge.
But why is it that we have these core beliefs like, “It’s never going to be better than now,” or “Before I can change I must understand what made me this way,” or the old Murphy’s Law example, “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment,” rule our hopes and potentials? Do they have to, or are there ‘technologies’ that can bring us past and through these interior storms of perception.
Every #SelfHelp book that I have read purports a road map to address these challenges. Some suggest using your mind and cognitive processes to ‘realize’ the falsehood of these pre-programmed responses. Ideas like becoming aware of your breath, or other present moment cues are ways to accomplish this. Positive thinking and Affirmation oriented maps are another approach. Jack Canfield, The Success Principles, & Chicken Soup For The Soul uses harnessing focus with affirmation, meditation, goal setting, and choice points where one decides between the person they are, and the person they want to be. Tony Robbins says that “Human emotion is one of the greatest resources we have.” He suggests that harnessing the physical expressions of emotion can help control our visceral responses. He further suggests that by placing our physical selves in a mimic of a positive experience we can actually create and reprogram ourselves to be in those positive mental states. Others have posited this as well. The now well known #TEDTalk by Amy Cuddy, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are surprised much of the world with her research about posture and self confidence, not exactly the same & certainly related. Tim Krause also of the TEDTalks stage speaks about cue and response systems in his talk How To Manipulate Emotions . He suggests that using self hypnosis or self-conditioning cues can change your existing responses.
The question is do these techniques really work, especially long term? Can we override deeply ingrained emotional responses? For me the jury is still out frankly. Using all of the positive focus tools, I have noticed a shift in paradigm in my life, and, there is quite a bit of effort to maintain these states. Over time there is a limit that any one practice will be effective. Is it a matter of time before positivity gets to be the new anchor? Will the efforting always be a part of the process? I can’t say that I know. When confronted by a challenge to the elevated paradigm, can we maintain, or re-attain that emotional/energetic space with less effort than before? Furthermore is it merely a self delusion to attempt this? By choosing this focus are we merely blinding ourselves to the “real” world?
In my own journeys lately I swing between what I consider to be the more ‘elevated’, desirable, certainly more pleasurable states of perception and action to the ‘old paradigms of self doubt, defensiveness, and fear. I imagine this is a common state. The Inner Voices sing in a harmonic chorus of Yes, No, & Maybe, as I step my way towards goals & desired outcomes. The world itself seems to reflect back the status of that same interior dialog confirming whichever voice is the strongest. Does that confirm the change possibility, or the opposite?
I still hold to the intent of the quote above, “think of the view at the top.” This is a newer journeying so for now I am somewhat content to stay in the question. The assurances that these techniques will lead towards a more fulfilling life are worth testing, in my opinion. As this is my (finite) life I guess that’s the only one that matters.
“Utilizing Artmaking to open deeper conversations with ourselves, so that we can access our own wisdom to guide us forward in our lives.”
September and October have always felt most appropriate to me as a NEW Year. Perhaps because of all the years of “Back To School,” indoctrination, perhaps because my entry to this existence was in the Fall, and perhaps there is some cell deep connection to Judaism whose New Year celebration of Rosh Hashanah taking place in this vicinity. In any case it has always been true for me. I have been feeling the faint glimmerings, the tiny disturbances in the Earth that portend new growth. I can almost feel/see the new, tiny shoots of green of a new iteration of my life beginning to sprout and reach up towards the light.