Have you ever asked yourself, “Why does this ALWAYS happen to me?!” because you continue having similar experiences? This may be due to your perspective. Let me explain.
When you have an undesirable experience, especially when you are young, your ego takes a snapshot as something it needs to protect you from. Any similar situation will immediately ignite warning bells in your mind. While that protection may have been necessary, it can later become a limiting belief paradigm that hinders you from living your desired life. It becomes a lens through which you view your world. You unconsciously look for people and situations that require you to go into that protection/defensive mode.
Imagine you have sunglasses with yellow lenses. You put them on, and everything looks yellow. You have another pair of sunglasses with red lenses. You put them on, and everything looks red.
The same thing happens with your protections and defensive mechanisms. Whatever you are attempting to protect yourself from becomes the lens through which you see all of life. “Of course this happened to me again,” you say. Yes, because at an unconscious level, you were looking for it to happen.
You see what you look for.
Are you ready to trade in your old sunglasses that limit your perspective and replace them with another pair that brings you more desirable experiences? Here are some steps that you can take to change your paradigm:
1. Identify the Pattern – To create change, you’ll need to identify what patterns show up in your life that you would like to change. Do the people you date always treat you the same way? Do your business deals never work out? Do things always get stolen from you? Do people always disrespect you? Consider what things seem to “always” happen to you and write them in a journal.
2. Explore the History– See if you can pinpoint when these things first started happening in your life. Was it something that happened as a child? Did you feel you never had enough? Did you feel you weren’t good enough? Did your parents treat you a certain way, or did they have fears or beliefs you took on as your own? What rules were you given to live by in your culture or society? When was the first time you felt like a victim?
3. Choose a New Paradigm – Now that you’ve brought the unconscious belief into your conscious awareness, consider if you are willing to let it go. You may consciously feel that you are, but how does it feel in your body when you think about letting it go? It might not feel good. It might feel like you are leaving yourself exposed and as if you won’t be safe without it. After all, you have this belief in the first place to protect you, so it would make perfect sense that there is a part of you unwilling to part with it. Adopting a different perspective, paradigm, and way of being in the world will take a conscious choice.
You don’t have to give it up all at once. Awareness is the first step and a big one. Simply being aware will start bringing change into your life, even if you aren’t fully committed to letting it go yet. Once you see something, you can’t un-see it. So, if you have an experience that fits the old perspective you identified, you will see it for what it is. You can then say to it, “Oh, here’s that old paradigm showing up for me again. Okay, I see you and know that you come from my past. What’s another way I can see this situation? How can I react in a more empowering way?”
For example, if belongings seem to be taken from you often, you could change your perspective from, “People always steal from me!” to, “Someone must have really needed my sweatshirt to risk taking it. I really liked it and will miss it, but I have others. I hope that it keeps them warm.” See how the experience is the same, but the perspective is vastly different? One is victimized and negative and the other is objective and positive. It’s as simple as a shift in perspective.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. Patterns, perspectives, and paradigms take time. But through awareness, curiosity, and openness, you can begin to shift your perspectives to match the experiences you wish to have rather than allow the ghosts from the past to haunt you and make you feel bad. You have the power to see situations in any way you desire. Why not choose to feel good?
Sending love,
Lara