And So it Shall Forever Be

There are many best-selling books on the market today that discuss the importance of the quality of our thoughts. They go into great detail on how our thoughts create our reality. A very interesting exercise is to be mindful of the things we say spontaneously, without forethought. Are the things we say generally life-affirming? One thing I find interesting is that I hear people everyday say such positive things about others but are so hard on themselves. For some reason we tend to be quick to belittle ourselves, in a seemingly lighthearted way, without realizing that we are, in fact, setting up the circumstances for that experience to be perpetuated.

So I offer you a little trick to help bring to your awareness to what you are creating. After you make any statement about yourself, regardless of how innocent it may seem, simply think to yourself, “And So it Shall Forever Be” and see how that feels. If it doesn’t feel nurturing then perhaps it might be healthy to begin to shift one’s self-talk.

One might argue that lighthearted self-incrimination is no big deal. “Oh, I didn’t mean it, it’s just something I say,” may be one way to rationalize it. However, I would offer that one doesn’t squeeze a grapefruit and get orange juice. In other words, what comes out is always and only a reflection of what’s inside. If it didn’t exist inside it would never have expression in our speech or actions.

So, let’s say that we make a decision to shift something we no longer want to do, like gossiping. It can be challenging to let go of bad habits and we oftentimes beat ourselves up when we feel we are not making progress as fast as we like. But if we understand the steps to shifting habits I think the process is much easier.

Here are the steps of change as I see them. For the sake of simplicity I’ll use gossiping as the example.

Step 1: We have no awareness whatsoever that we are doing something that may be detrimental to our full enjoyment of life.

Step 2: We hear that gossiping may be harmful but it has no effect on us. We hear the warnings but do not take them into our awareness.

Step 3: We begin to take the warnings into our awareness but not sufficiently enough to have any effect. “That doesn’t apply to me.”

Step 4: We begin to feel that, maybe, gossiping is not healthy but the thought doesn’t come until long after we have gossiped. This is a pivotal point in the progression as our awareness that maybe we should not be gossiping is now being associated with a specific episode of gossiping. But there is a long time lag between the specific instance and the thought that maybe it was not life-affirming. At this point however we may not necessarily think we should change.

Step 5: We continue to gossip and the thought that maybe we shouldn’t comes quicker to our awareness, but still after the fact. We now start to make the decision to reframe from gossiping.

Step 6: Old habits die hard. We continue to gossip but the time gap between the gossip and our remembrance of our intention to stop becomes narrower. Right around here the beginnings of self-incrimination for not stopping start to materialize.

Step 7: Even as we are gossiping, even as the words are coming out of our mouths, we know we would rather not be doing it. But it still came out spontaneously and because of that fact self-incrimination can become high. The gossiping came out first but the remembrance of our intention was almost instantaneous. This is the hardest time in the process because we are so hard on ourselves. We make ourselves wrong and our self-esteem starts to drop. However, I would propose another viewpoint in that, in fact, we should honor and congratulate ourselves because we have make tremendous progress. It is not that we are failing, we are simply at a specific stage, a late one at that, in the process. So rather than self-loathing, which will slow the process, we can honor our progress, which will support, and speed up the process.

Step 8: We have the awareness even before we gossip but it still comes out from habit. But we recognize that right before it came out we had the awareness.

Step 9: We have the awareness before and we consciously choose to go ahead because we want to maintain the status quo with regard to our environment. But afterwards we feel this is not, in fact, a reflection our highest concept of ourselves.

Step 10: We have the urge to gossip but we consciously choose to reframe.

Step 11: Gossiping is no longer a part of our awareness.

So those are the steps as I see them. They may not all apply to everyone but the main point I wish to make is that change is a process, consisting of many steps and honoring each step will facilitate the growth process.

Enjoy life's sacred journey.

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