Is your ‘familiar’ keeping you small?
As most of you know, I love to challenge you to grow, to become a higher version of yourself.
My work as a coach and consultant to corporate teams, as well as my training in healing modalities and spiritual alignment, has given me the mindset that our greatest goal should always be to seek a new perspective that allows us to be more fully open to the truth of our potential.
Today I’m proposing that you look deeply into what has become familiar as the key to unlocking the code for what keeps you smaller than you desire being.
The ‘familiar’ is a bit like a coma-induced state whereby we cruise around, doing the same things day in and day out, without giving attention to our motives or meanings. Most people I know operate in this realm, on autopilot. Many of you may even argue that this is all that’s possible for you. I beg to differ.
What is familiar is often simply a result of genetic programming, family beliefs, cultural ‘norms’. And oddly enough, many of these ‘norms’ are far from normal - and even further from healthy, liberating, or empowering.
I challenge you to look deeply into the patterns that you repeat and investigate why you do them. Why is this behavior or way of thinking now standardized for you?
Recently, I did a lot of digging on this very topic during my meditation time. I sat quietly, with eyes closed, and asked myself over and over again, ‘what do I experience again and again that I want to change in my life?’ What I realized was profound.
One of my key insights was around my challenge with joy and play. Why was it so difficult for me to just naturally be silly and light-hearted? What was presented was that, having been raised by parents who both came from farms, I was born into a community that frowned upon ‘idle hands’. I recalled how my mother would often asked when catching us giggling as children, “What trouble are you up to over there?” Play and joy were signs of slacking or, even worse, not obliging the code of the hard-working, gold standard. Becoming aware that joy wasn’t my familiar, I set out to change this immediately.
Statistics show that we are attracted to and return to what is familiar without even being conscious that we’re doing this. We’ll marry partners that have similar traits to our parents - because this energy (although invisible to us) is what is familiar (and therefore ‘comfortable’). Victims of abuse often return to their abuser because the known oddly feels safer than the unknown. It isn’t until we become fully awake to the detrimental affects of our familiar patterns that we can make a change.
Use this simple process to explore what is ‘familiar’ that is keeping you small.
1. List some things you’d like to experience more of in your life. Joy? Love? Creativity? Abundance? Fitness? Romance? Success? Personal growth? Kindness?
2. Next, look at the people you have had the most exposure to through the years including your family, friends, and work associates. What are they modeling in these areas? Be very honest. This is where the real magical insights can be found.
3. Establish new behaviors to support your new desired familiar. When you recognize that you have the power to make new choices, everything changes for good. How will you choose to be different? What action steps could you take today and everyday to help make a change in at least one key area? (Hint: Choose one area at a time and take baby steps. Biting off too much at once will guarantee failure. These shifts don’t happen overnight but rather with conscious, steady attention.)
4. Ask someone you trust to keep you accountable. Tell a dear friend or colleague what you’re working on. Let them know you expect to slip and ask if they’d be willing to remind you when you are getting off track how important it was to you to make this change. (Warning, hearing someone tell you ‘You’re being X” can sting. Take deep breaths and remind yourself they’re not attacking you; they’re honoring a commitment made because they care.)
5. Keep track of your progress. Write in a journal as you travel through your days, noting when you have insights and the shifts in awareness. If you doubt your progress, your entries will remind you that you’re heading in the right direction. You might even gain new insights from re-reading some of the experiences you’ve had. It’s like watering a garden and being able to watch new growth and beautiful new blooms appearing.
6. Celebrate your growth; even the small steps. Take time to cheer yourself on and acknowledge when change has been made. Your mind responds to reward; this ensures that making change becomes another, new and positive familiar.
Be willing to take 100% responsibility for everything that you do, feel, or believe, and you CAN have exquisite breakthroughs to your next level, to your most exceptional life. Life-changing progress is possible with this simple practice. It’s a choice, day by day, especially when you decide what will be your NEW familiar.