He wasn’t giving me what I wanted. I wasn’t giving myself what I needed. I depended on his assurance and neglected the voice inside whispering “it’s time to try something different”. I was scared and didn’t realize it. I was comfortable, attached and certainly not prepared to discover what different looked and felt like. Until I was forced to. That voice inside no longer a whisper but rather a roaring scream threatening my very being.
Why do we gravitate towards the same reoccurring hurt and negative emotions?
Because in the most logical illogical sense the pain is familiar. Something familiar usually has feel good properties and often times makes us feel comfortable. So though pain is not an ideal space to be in, it’s what we know and therefore we keep the momentum going in that direction. Unconsciously we trick ourselves into feeling “good” about something that in reality does not. Consciousness often always rears its head and confirms with us that this pain is actually really painful and does not feel good. But because we have not practiced enough feeling better feelings outside of pain, we become afraid of the uncertainty that comes along with exploring something new, different and unfamiliar, thereby sticking with familiarity.
It makes no sense but somehow simultaneously makes all the sense in the world. The logic is twisted but this is the conditioned un-awakened physche so many embrace. I’ve personally been there, and for the life of me could not understand how I was winding up in the very same predicament, experiencing the same feelings, ones that I desperately claimed not wanting to repeat. I’m not sure why it always take for something catastrophic to happen, the kind of situation or circumstance that knocks you flat on your face to finally come to the dreadful truth that change need to be made or else?
We have to really understand that:
- Our brains are hard drives that simply follow directions encoded into our psyches and we must literally create new routes within our brains to change our habits
- It is difficult to change what we are not aware of, and we are generally unaware of ourselves. Once we’re aware of ourselves we can better understand the external systems that confound our expectations
When what we do, how we do it and the way we do it no longer fits our purpose in life, we must choose to do something else.