“I identified that I needed to stand up for my boundaries with my coworkers. I did it and it worked but I keep having to do it.”

“I tried really hard not to sound critical of my daughter, but it seems like no matter what I say she still takes it that way.”

“I realize my wife and I have different communication styles and that her intention is to express affection. But I just wish she didn’t talk to me that way.”

They took action and the results seemed inconclusive or temporary. They practiced that new mindset but it didn’t make the old one go away completely. Creating change is hard work and if the payoff isn’t clear it doesn’t seem like there’s any point.

But here’s the thing -

The things we really struggle with are difficult because they’ve become habits. One of the reasons a negative belief or habit is so powerful is that we’ve been repeating it and reinforcing it for a long time. A habit, by definition, has to be practiced over and over until it becomes second nature (A belief can be seen as a habitual thought). The most effective habits (negative or positive) operate at the speed of light, without our even having to think about them. That’s why the negative ones are so insidious – they are streamlined, market tested, and operating on auto pilot.

Therefore -

What I suggest is to replace your undesirable habit with one that would serve you. And creating new habits, like getting to Carnegie Hall, requires practice, practice, practice. So when that situation you hate insists on resurfacing, instead of investing your energy in feeling ineffective, unsupported, or resistant, see it instead as opportunity. You’ve gotten this far – you identified that habit that’s holding you back, you clarified the change you wish to create. The critical third step is to get really good at execution.

In order for that new positive relationship to the situation to work on auto pilot, or the substitution of the new constructive thought to occur at light speed, you are going to need a lot of chances to practice. You said you wanted it to be different … How kind and generous of the Universe to have supplied you with ample opportunity to create the new habit of your choosing.

Noticing tree photo by ZeMoufette

I find that what really muddies up the water on this one is that it’s so hard not to see it hierarchically. The point is not that one is better than the other. Is it better to be 4 or 40 years old? You may prefer one but neither is inherently better. However, one always precedes the other. It does seem to be that 4 develops eventually toward 40.

So in a way my answer to my friend’s question is that we seek higher vibrations, because we’ve got plenty of low ones already. Because we suspect these higher vibrations will help balance out the overabundance of lower ones, and help us deal with the problems caused by a disproportionate ratio of frequencies. And because that is where all the new stuff is.

If you want to grow and progress and discover, that’s where the new material is. The rest is recycling (not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

To experience more of our full self we must be willing to grow into a more evolved stage of who we are. A child’s consciousness must evolve into an adult’s to deal with the new possibilities and responsibilities of being an adult.  Just to be clear: ideally we would maintain our connection to our child self (and all the wonderful and valuable qualities it gives us access to – imagination, innocence, etc.) while we added the adult consciousness.

When an infant learns to pick up food and put it in its mouth it is a huge development, but in the overall scheme of its life that skill resonates at a very low developmental frequency. Not nearly as high as when a child can ask for what it wants, or safely create it’s own food.

Are these stages better? Honestly, I think most people would say… kinda. But that would still be judgmental. What about if the child were able to create food purely through the power of intention? Would that be better? Either way, the new frontier is in that direction and whether out of curiosity, need or the prompting of our spirit, that’s where we are all headed.

I have found it invaluable to become aware of “red flags” that indicate my ego is inflamed.  Assuming there is no truly offensive component to what you’re being presented with, an especially strong negative reaction to something can help you see that you’ve taken it personally and your ego has become deeply engaged.  If it wasn’t, the response would be more along the lines of, “it didn’t really grab me,” “I had trouble understanding it,” or “just not my taste,” without the need to condemn.

My personal favorite red flag is “stupid.” It almost always indicates that my ego has felt the need to attack or reject something that isn’t really that important.

The real key is to recognize the energy behind the word or phrase. It is often a powerful and disproportionate expression of judgment, alienation or hostility that allows you to dismiss or try to feel superior to something by which you feel irrationally threatened.  Ego can show up in a lot of other ways, and for a lot of other reasons, but I find this version particularly valuable to become conscious of.

Red flags can offer you the choice to discontinue travelling down the path of negativity. They also can suggest that there is something very charged about the subject or situation you feel the need to so passionately reject. The more you catch on to the tools and strategies your ego uses to disguise and drive you away from threats, the more you give yourself the opportunity to sabotage its attempts to sabotage you.

You may be familiar with the spiral image of growth.  I feel it is particularly applicable here.  Instead of seeing your development in terms of a timeline, where your life progresses in a straight line from point A through Z, think of a coiled spring or tornado.  This non-linear image suggests that we go through the full range of a cycle, and when the circle is complete, we go up a level and begin a new cycle.

Sometimes a new cycle contains completely new experiences and challenges, another times we are asked to re-explore a theme.  We must work through what it means to forgive, accept or choose to be empowered at THIS level.

A friend of mine once told me he wished he could be like his 3-year-old son, who would just walk up to other children and say, “Hi, my name is Charlie, wanna play with me?” As we all know it will be completely different process in high school.  He might have to revisit what it means to be a friend in mid-life, and again in retirement.

So when we ask why something we felt we had dealt with has resurfaced, it’s a little like hearing the clock chime and saying, “Not again!  Wasn’t it 3:00 yesterday?  I thought we did this already.”  Three o’clock today is not the same as three o’clock yesterday.  Of course it is possible that you didn’t really work through the issue fully the first time, but usually you know when you’ve made a breakthrough, which is why it’s so confusing for it to come back around.

Another helpful perspective is to consider that if an obstacle or challenge keeps presenting itself in different forms and at many levels, it might just be one of your life’s themes. Maybe this time around you are here to work on being independent or not taking responsibility for others, so it’s just going to show up over and over.  This may offer you no comfort, but it can mitigate the surprise and disappointment.  More importantly, it allows you to see it as an ongoing process of refinement and not something you expect to “get past.”  You can do maintenance work on the issue, even when it’s not right in your face. This can minimize the degree to which it hijacks your life when it flares up.

Let’s say you were confronted with self-esteem issues early in your life and had to work through the way your self-image was disproportionately influenced by how the community and your peer group saw you.  Years later, you had to explore dependency on the opinion of a teacher, coach, parent or love interest.  Now you start to notice that you aren’t very nice to yourself.  That you hold beliefs about yourself that are negative and critical and that your standards and expectations for others are much more generous than for yourself.  All of this makes you feel bad about yourself and reminds you in some way of how others used to make you feel.

Instead of going into “oh no, not this again” mode, which will only make you feel worse, you have the chance to recognize that this issue is likely one of the subjects of this lifetime, and your job is to become an expert on it.  A true expert never finishes their investigation of the subject. People are usually hoping their life purpose will look like curing cancer, winning a gold medal or bringing peace to the Middle East.  More often it is more mundane but no less challenging.  Either way, mastery requires practice.

Once you begin to notice that something like self-esteem is one of your major life themes, you can then continue to explore and apply the things you learned through the last crisis.  You can develop your ability to become conscious of subtle symptoms instead of waiting for them to grow into a full-blown disaster and starting over.  When you identify a theme, it gives you clarity about where your energy needs to be focused.

Many times obstacles, especially recurring ones, can be seen as your spirit’s way of saying to you, “It’s time for you to allow me to be a bigger part of your life. [Which is another way of saying “become more conscious” or “go to the next level.”]  But this one thing is in the way.  So I’m going to put it right in front of your face so that you can’t avoid it.  I know you aren’t going to like this, but trust me.  We’re going to be so much better off after you work through it and we can move on.”

Photo by: Ped-X-ing

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” [This quote is frequently attributed to Nelson Mandela but is actually by Marianne Williamson, from her book A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles".]

So why would we choose to stay small, be less than our full selves?  I think what scares a lot of us is that we do not know what we REALLY want, and we do not trust ourselves (in most cases correctly) to exercise our power safely, effectively, and responsibly.

Think of the myth of Midas.  By acquiring what he thought he wanted and valued most – gold – he ended up destroying everything and everyone he actually cared about. Every “Behind The Music” and “E! True Hollywood story” are essentially the same: fame, wealth, and power not only don’t end up fixing anything or making stars happy, they end up ruining their lives (at least temporarily).

I once heard someone say that money and fame only magnify what is already true.  People who craved these things thought that’s what they wanted, and on some level probably thought it would make them less insecure, powerless, self-loathing, fearful, alone, etc.

If power feels dangerous to you (and this is usually perceived unconsciously), you often will eschew opportunities to claim it and then disguise this from yourself with confusion, overwhelm or distraction.

As long as we live with self imposed limitations (afraid to fail, not enough money or time, too late for me, etc.) we don’t have to face the fact that we don’t really know what we want.  And, we don’t know what to do with power.

To avoid knowing this, we are willing to pay the lesser price of being disappointed with our lives – it allows us to blame circumstances, God, or those around us … and avoid responsibility. In addition it gives us plausible deniability: “What do you mean I chose this? I don’t WANT to feel this way!  I don’t LIKE to be in this situation!”

We also unconsciously sense the way empowerment will be disruptive to “what is.”  My life will change radically, in ways I can’t anticipate (fear of the unknown should not be underestimated).  Others will not always respond well to your modeling/manifesting something they have chosen to remain safely ignorant of.

Gandhi, Jesus, MLK, JFK and RFK made others feel threatened to the point where they had to destroy the messenger of the power they were being offered.  When we empower ourselves, it affects others.  We are given MANY unconscious messages our whole lives from people we care about that say “don’t get too big,” “don’t overshadow me,” “don’t leave me,” “stay under control,” “don’t risk,” “don’t make anyone mad at you,” even as we are being told “you can be anything you want!” – which they almost never really mean.  (Really? So I can be gay, a drug addict, a different religion, a failure, a serial killer, a thief, have a sex change?)*

Have you found power to be dangerous, daunting or unmanageable?

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* I’m not making a value judgment about any of these.  It’s simply a list of things for which others might reject us.

Photo by Esparta