Theres an idea in some philosophy circles that nothing can exist without its opposite. Light and dark, love and apathy, yin and yang. Im not here to debate whether this idea is true in every case, but Id like to tell you how this philosophy of opposites has helped me break negative patterns in my own life. Theres been many times in my life that Ive found myself stuck in a pattern. I know that Im stuck, and I know it doesnt feel good, but I have no idea why or how it happened. All I could think was, Seriously? Again? Being caught in a pattern is an incredibly frustrating and scary place to be. I would often reflect in those moments and worry, Am I just going to keep repeating this pattern forever? One of the most common patterns I would find myself in was the pattern of being extremely overwhelmed. It would play out something like this. Id get really excited about a project or idea. In the excitement of the passion and possibility, I would agree to be involved in whatever my friends were working on. Things would go great for a few weeks, maybe a few months, but like clockwork I would increasingly start to feel weighted with responsibility. Ultimately Id feel so overwhelmed that Id totally crash and burn, flaking on my commitments, hurting people, and wondering why and how it had happened again, and again, and again. Ive played out negative patterns with money, relationships, work, health and other areas of life. And regardless of the pattern I was playing out, there was something that I noticed that I would ask myself every time it happened. The question I would ask myself was, Why is this happening to me? But the truth was I was asking the wrong question. Think of a pendulum, like the ones you seen in movies or that people have on their desks. When a pendulum is standing still, and not moving, how do you get it to swing to one side? If we want the pendulum to swing all the way to the right, all we have to do is swing it all the way to the left, the opposite side. As simplistic as it sounds theres no swinging to the right without first a swing to the left. When it came to my own life, and my negative patterns, the law of opposites also held true. My feelings of being completely overwhelmed were just like the pendulum swinging to the right. But instead of asking myself, Why is this happening to me and stopping there, what I shouldve been asking was, How am I creating this? What was I doing to cause the pendulum to swing to the left? Every negative pattern has some original behavior that got it started, and often that behavior starts off well intentioned. For me the original behavior that ultimately lead to me feeling overwhelmed was my strong desire to be a people pleaser. I loved saying yes and I was really shitty at saying no. Even when I knew I had too much on my plate, even when I knew I couldnt come through, I would still say yes. I wanted people to like me and I wanted people to feel that I was great at managing it all. But of course it was all a huge lie. My need to be liked, above all else, caused the pendulum to swing to the left. But because being liked felt good, I never noticed that it was the root issue that started the pattern in the first place. Emotional eating, mismanaging money, continually dating the wrong type of person, self sabotage - whatever the pattern theres always and original behavior that got it all started. Find that original behavior, the thing that caused the pendulum to swing to the left, and you wont have to worry about why it ended up swinging to the right.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:58:28 +0000
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