Post by Della Wren on Mar 8, 2023 15:51:11 GMT -6
Behavior is hard to change.
Now that's a shocking statement right?!
Before you click away, just keep reading for a second.
When I was healing all the big, deep wounds I carried around with me, I didn't have to go digging for them. They were easy to find. Not only that, the emotions were easy to find too. They were pretty much in my face. I didn't get much of a choice on whether I knew they were there or not.
Behavior on the other hand, is a whole different beast. Consider how much of your behavior you consciously think about in a day. How much do you actively get in your head and decide on before you do it? How much just sort of happens?
How much slower would your life be if you consciously thought about every action and word you did or spoke in a day? How much would that slow you down?
Probably quite a bit because the conscious mind is a considerably slower beast than the unconscious mind most of us use to function in our day-to-day experience. We just don't pay that much attention to what we're doing and saying. Consider the average conversation. You don't think about phrases like "Hi, how are you?" it just comes out. Imagine if you actually stopped to think. Would you even say that, would you be more creative, or maybe it would completely stop you because it would give you time to think about being shy and quiet?
How much would you avoid if you consciously thought about everything first? Maybe nothing or maybe everything, it would totally depend on your life experience and how much of what you do is based on pain. That's kind of where I'm going with this. The pain you carry around from your life experience affects your behavior, good or bad. That means that much of your behavior is based on coping mechanisms and survival skills that you created to help protect you in the past.
You no longer need those things. You aren't in that pain anymore. Yet, you haven't fixed your behavior. Chances are good you haven't even thought about it because when we talk about healing, we really only talk about emotional healing. The odd time you'll hear about fixing your thinking, but that's not as common as the emotional healing aspect is. The focus on emotions means we leave 2 very important aspects of ourselves out; our thoughts and our behavior.
When people ask spiritual teachers or healers "how" to heal what they are really asking is how to change their behavior. What's the action I need to take? 99% of the time, the action is some inward emotional release. It's not behavior based. It's not even mentally based. It's heart-centered, emotional work. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing with the emotions and you have to go through those to heal, they just aren't the only show in town. There is more work to do beyond the emotional stuff.
What often happens is every time people cry or get upset, they think it means they have some deep healing to do. The truth is, anybody can cry at a sad memory. That's not all that challenging. The idea that somehow tears mean deep healing just keeps you stuck. You essentially end up trying to numb yourself, which you can't do. It doesn't work. We're go for no emotional response which isn't okay either.
The action to do is to figure out how your wounds show up in your behavior. What parts of your behavior are causing you pain? What behaviors do you have that create pain in your life? How can you change those so that the pain stops?
You see, there's no deep healing to do. Shift your behavior so you're no longer doing things that cause you pain and then you'll feel better. I know, it sounds easy. It's much harder to actually figure out what the behavior is. Why? Because it's so darn unconscious. We don't think about our responses to most things that happen in our lives. The reality is, you'll probably figure it out after the fact. You'll figure it out once something happens, you react, and you don't like the outcome. Then you'll question your behavior. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that because that helps you become aware of it so that you can shift it next time you find yourself in a similar scenario.
The reality of being in a human body is that we don't get the opportunity to spend an hour figuring out how to respond to everything that happens in our lives. Sometimes we just have to go with it and do the best we can. The more our behavior is reflecting our pain, the more likely we are to create a little bit of trouble for ourselves. But as life keeps happening and experience keeps showing up, you'll become more aware of yourself and you'll know how to respond in a way that doesn't create more pain. It'll just take a little bit of time.
By the way, you can ask for experiences. The Universe will happily create an experience for you so that you can shift your behavior. If you ask for it to be shown to you, it will be. You just have to watch for it and then make sure you're paying attention to yourself when it happens. You'll get the opportunity to shift and you'll get to see what happens when you do. Did the behavior feel better? Did the pain stop? If yes, then you're on the right track.
It's not easy to do this stuff. We really have to be paying attention to ourselves. Even for me, for as aware as I am most of the time, I still catch crap behavior and I'm willing to own it when it happens. But, like you, I catch it after the fact and then I have the opportunity to fix it. Doing that repetitively is how you change your behavior. Yeah, it kind of becomes a full time job. If you want to heal and you don't want to be in pain anymore, then that's the work.
Are you willing to do it?
Love to all.
Della
Now that's a shocking statement right?!
Before you click away, just keep reading for a second.
When I was healing all the big, deep wounds I carried around with me, I didn't have to go digging for them. They were easy to find. Not only that, the emotions were easy to find too. They were pretty much in my face. I didn't get much of a choice on whether I knew they were there or not.
Behavior on the other hand, is a whole different beast. Consider how much of your behavior you consciously think about in a day. How much do you actively get in your head and decide on before you do it? How much just sort of happens?
How much slower would your life be if you consciously thought about every action and word you did or spoke in a day? How much would that slow you down?
Probably quite a bit because the conscious mind is a considerably slower beast than the unconscious mind most of us use to function in our day-to-day experience. We just don't pay that much attention to what we're doing and saying. Consider the average conversation. You don't think about phrases like "Hi, how are you?" it just comes out. Imagine if you actually stopped to think. Would you even say that, would you be more creative, or maybe it would completely stop you because it would give you time to think about being shy and quiet?
How much would you avoid if you consciously thought about everything first? Maybe nothing or maybe everything, it would totally depend on your life experience and how much of what you do is based on pain. That's kind of where I'm going with this. The pain you carry around from your life experience affects your behavior, good or bad. That means that much of your behavior is based on coping mechanisms and survival skills that you created to help protect you in the past.
You no longer need those things. You aren't in that pain anymore. Yet, you haven't fixed your behavior. Chances are good you haven't even thought about it because when we talk about healing, we really only talk about emotional healing. The odd time you'll hear about fixing your thinking, but that's not as common as the emotional healing aspect is. The focus on emotions means we leave 2 very important aspects of ourselves out; our thoughts and our behavior.
When people ask spiritual teachers or healers "how" to heal what they are really asking is how to change their behavior. What's the action I need to take? 99% of the time, the action is some inward emotional release. It's not behavior based. It's not even mentally based. It's heart-centered, emotional work. Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing with the emotions and you have to go through those to heal, they just aren't the only show in town. There is more work to do beyond the emotional stuff.
What often happens is every time people cry or get upset, they think it means they have some deep healing to do. The truth is, anybody can cry at a sad memory. That's not all that challenging. The idea that somehow tears mean deep healing just keeps you stuck. You essentially end up trying to numb yourself, which you can't do. It doesn't work. We're go for no emotional response which isn't okay either.
The action to do is to figure out how your wounds show up in your behavior. What parts of your behavior are causing you pain? What behaviors do you have that create pain in your life? How can you change those so that the pain stops?
You see, there's no deep healing to do. Shift your behavior so you're no longer doing things that cause you pain and then you'll feel better. I know, it sounds easy. It's much harder to actually figure out what the behavior is. Why? Because it's so darn unconscious. We don't think about our responses to most things that happen in our lives. The reality is, you'll probably figure it out after the fact. You'll figure it out once something happens, you react, and you don't like the outcome. Then you'll question your behavior. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that because that helps you become aware of it so that you can shift it next time you find yourself in a similar scenario.
The reality of being in a human body is that we don't get the opportunity to spend an hour figuring out how to respond to everything that happens in our lives. Sometimes we just have to go with it and do the best we can. The more our behavior is reflecting our pain, the more likely we are to create a little bit of trouble for ourselves. But as life keeps happening and experience keeps showing up, you'll become more aware of yourself and you'll know how to respond in a way that doesn't create more pain. It'll just take a little bit of time.
By the way, you can ask for experiences. The Universe will happily create an experience for you so that you can shift your behavior. If you ask for it to be shown to you, it will be. You just have to watch for it and then make sure you're paying attention to yourself when it happens. You'll get the opportunity to shift and you'll get to see what happens when you do. Did the behavior feel better? Did the pain stop? If yes, then you're on the right track.
It's not easy to do this stuff. We really have to be paying attention to ourselves. Even for me, for as aware as I am most of the time, I still catch crap behavior and I'm willing to own it when it happens. But, like you, I catch it after the fact and then I have the opportunity to fix it. Doing that repetitively is how you change your behavior. Yeah, it kind of becomes a full time job. If you want to heal and you don't want to be in pain anymore, then that's the work.
Are you willing to do it?
Love to all.
Della