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How often have you wanted to change an aspect of your life, only to find that
aspect repeating itself again and again?
We sometimes become frustrated by our income level. Only to avoid taking the
risk to try something that has the potential for increased financial success.
We sometimes become frustrated by the pressure of bills. Only to make an
impulsive purchase that increases them.
Repeatable patterns of behavior and choice-making are forged by success and
pleasure....and stress and fear.
Humans are very adept at adoption. Whatever our life-experience is, if we
maintain it long enough, we adapt to it. Even when it's uncomfortable.
Ben Franklin once said that a person only needs to do something for two weeks
consistently for it to become ingrained as a habit.
Go to the gym daily for two weeks then miss a few days. Pay attention to how
your mood and body reflect the missed sessions.
Fight constantly with a lover. Decide that you're going to end the
relationship if the conflict doesn't cease. Then, once it does, notice how
often one of you creates disharmony again. It's as if conflict has become a
form of intimacy.
Decide to get rid of stress in your life. Then notice how often you set
yourself up for it:
Have you ever put off paying a bill (or even looking at it?) even though you
had the money?
Have you ever watched the fuel gauge in your car dip dangerously close to
empty? Only to drive past gas stations hoping to make it to your destination,
even though you have money for gas with you.
Have you ever driven without auto insurance or failed to register your car,
even though you had the money for these things? Only to drive nervously,
watching the rear-view mirror for cops.
Adoption to SURVIVAL MODE is common for many of us who have lived with stress
and conflict for a sustained period of time. Overcoming it is difficult (most
habits have subtle cues as well as obvious ones).
But overcoming it is just what needs to happen for our lives to become
abundant and pleasurable.
How do we overcome SURVIVAL MODE?
1) Understanding it's characteristics and how they manifest in our attitude,
interpretation of experience and effect on our choices and the options that we
believe are available to us is the first step.
2) Keeping a SURVIVAL MODE Journal so that we can consciously maintain
awareness of how our actions sustain it, follows.
3) Designing a Meditation List of experiences (both past and present) that
represent times when we have risked change, and the change made things better.
4) Designing a Meditation List of experiences (both past and present) that
represent times when we first interpreted someone's actions or words for there
possible conflict or stress meaning, but then considered another
interpretation that was less negative, and, by reacting from the second
interpretation, our experience of the event was better.
Overcoming SURVIVAL MODE frees us to experience life without stress and
conflict. If we choose. And what an important choice to make for the sake of
our families and ourselves!
Especially if we have kids. After-all, they learn how to experience life
through us. And the emotional energy that we infuse our homes with become the
normal emotions for them to carry.
Remember the emotional characteristic of your home when you were a child?
Homes filled with joy and sustenance raise stable, happy kids who, once they
are adults, believe that, regardless of how difficult things get, they'll be
OK.
Homes filled with tension and fear raise anxious kids who, once they are
adults, are often waiting for something to go wrong and fret easily over
things that haven't even happened yet.
Overcoming SURVIVAL MODE makes life better for everyone involved. If you
experience it, at any level, take up the remedies that are listed a few
paragraphs ago. Work them consistently for two weeks so that abundance and joy
become a habit.
My Love Goes With You,
Rudy Garcia
Sole Support
