Did you think you had outgrown your old habits?
Think again
Lovely sunflower,
Getting caught up in old habits that we thought we had outgrown doesn’t mean we never grew at all. At times our inner dialog might not be the best one, we could suddenly stop our exercise regime or maybe we overindulge in whatever social media presents to us. “I thought I had come so far, but now I’m exactly where I began”, you might dramatically declare to yourself. The truth is though, ending up in a swamp is typically not as dramatic as we perceive it to be.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “two steps forward, one step back”. Life is not a linear journey, we’re not constantly walking in a thin straight line upward. If you’re not even sure your line is going up at all, I want to assure you that it is. As we go through life, no matter what we do or don’t do, we gather life experiences. You’re always learning by just existing here on earth. Wisdom doesn’t only come with age, but it always comes with age. There’s nothing you can do to mess that up. It’s something I’ve personally learned with age as well. I always thought I had to do these extreme changes to grow but I found the opposite to be true as well.
Time heals all wounds. Sometimes we don’t need to do something extravagant to make a shift, create a change or “get rid of” a behavior we don’t feel comfortable with. Sometimes we just need to do something small and let time pass and heal us. But that’s not something we want to hear. I once spoke to a doctor who told me “no one’s got time to be sick these days”. But by letting something progress in its own time, we also learn the importance of taking care of ourselves. If all we needed to do was take “the magic pill” and we’re all good to go again, we wouldn’t learn as much.
With that being said, we can create huge shifts and changes in our lives with our willpower and motivation. But sometimes we can’t because we’re not supposed to. And in those situations we need to be reminded that it’s okay. One day you might fall back into those old routines and that in itself might be helpful for your growth. The question is how long you will dwell in the energy of failure and when you will pick yourself up again. Trust that even if you don't see any progress, it’s always there.
It’s like being scared of falling into the water because there might be sharks in there. But in reality, it’s just a small pond. The sharks are only there in your own mind creating unnecessary havoc. Yes, you might fall into the water, but it’s probably not going to be as difficult as your mind might want you to believe it is. The protective part of our brain is there for a good reason, but sometimes it’s just too overprotective. If it’s telling you to not even bother trying, that nothing ever will change, I can with 100% certainty tell you that it’s wrong.
