by Victoria Hargis – FoF Magazine Contributor
Have you ever felt like you were stuck in the middle of Ground Hog Day? A place where it seemed that no matter what you did you was doomed to repeat the patterns of the past. You might be able to relate; have you ever felt the deja vue of having the same conversations over and over again with someone.
As you watch the conversation take off it feels like you could actually carry on both parts of the conversation kind of like a run away train not able to stop the eventual crash. I know you didn’t start out the conversation with the intention of it turning into an argument. Even with the greatest of intentions it is very easy to slip into the patterns of past negative conversations and so it was recently with me. Perhaps it was a mistake to attempt to discuss a shared investment because it brought all sorts of emotional pain to the surface of unresolved old arguments and current emotional rawness.
It is so easy to point the finger at the other party and just walk away thinking that they are an ass and there were many times in the past I would walk away wondering how the conversation went so awry. Really it is not our fault. We have been programmed throughout our lives and it is almost as if we have no choice but to repeat the behavior that we learned and practiced in the past. Or at least we had no choice until we decided to become conscious to who we real are and what we really believe.
Choosing another way meant that I reopened the conversation the next day in order to have a different ending. I did not want the conversation we had, to be the conversation. I was committed to having a relationship that is different than the relationship we had had in the past. In order to do that I needed to own what I was feeling and have my ex-husband own what he was feeling. So we began again each of us owning what we were feeling.
I would have you stop and think about the following questions when you are faced with a conflict. What if there is no need to defend anything? What if we are whole and perfect already and what we think we need to defend is all an illusion? What if when we got angry or hurt we stopped and asked ourselves what it triggered in us?
I have with a great deal of joy and pain brought up a ton of old resentments and unresolved emotional pain over the last few years. I have felt joy because what was unconscious to me before is conscious now so I do not need to choose to automatically live in old conditioned beliefs. I can choose what life I will live. Pain because it really hurts to be feeling it all at once and I am reminded that the pain comes from my resisting of the change to a different way of being. We all like to be comfortable in our beliefs and resist change at all costs. I am choosing to design the life I want instead of living the life I was given.
Perhaps you can relate, we can welcome the pain because it means the times they are a-changing and we are giving birth to a new life, one which we design.
Until we embrace the change we will continue to live the life we have instead of the life we want.
Where in your life are you resisting change? What would happen if you welcomed it?
Victoria Hargis, an FoF magazine contributor and Author of forthcoming book, MommaBear: Learning and Living Self Aware Leadership, believes life is what we make it. That is why it’s her passion to teach others about self-leadership. In today’s fast-paced world, leadership is the core component of success. Keynote speaker Victoria has the power to motivate and inspire your audience with her unique perspective of how to unleash the hidden power of leadership from within. Victoria has the knowledge and ability to present audiences with a clear-cut path to using emotional, social and intellectual growth to improve. She inspires audiences to be more courageous, make better decisions, increase their confidence and exceed their perceived limits.