My
mentor and Elder, Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor, reminds us, it usually takes
90 days to show results…and A LOT of people quit before they reach that point
of return.
It was 10:35 am this morning and I had just finished a half-hour conference call I’m on every morning with other businesswomen from around the country. It’s a combination coaching, accountability and prayer call. I love it!
But I’ve been feeling frustrated lately – even though I’ve been doing all the right things as far as “filling my pipeline” (making new sales contacts) and reviewing my goals each morning and night; following other “success tenants” – because I’m still not seeing results.
There’s a “Slight Edge” Principle that says if you do just a few things consistently – every single day – that effort will compound over time and produce results.
But there’s a period of “doing the do” that you have to put in before you start to see the measured results come back to you. That’s where I’m at – in the middle of the new course of action.
So, when I got off the call, even though I love the energy and the camaraderie and the coaching, I was feeling restless. I’ve been feeling restless for a while now.
I began pacing rapidly back and forth between my kitchen and living room – which in a one-bedroom apartment is NOT a very large space!
I often pace. I pace to think. I pace to pace. I pace to calm down. I pace to ramp up. It helps me expend energy. I pace.
I started talking aloud (as I often talk to myself).
“Restless,” I kept repeating aloud,” restless in mind…restless in body…restless in spirit… restless in soul…”
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at the manual treadmill standing in the middle of my dining-living room. “Well,” I thought, “if I’m going to do this furious pacing thing I might as well turn it into exercise and get on my treadmill!”
So, I put on a lecture by Dr. Joe Dispenza, the author of “Evolve Your Brain – The Science of Changing Your Mind” and his, at that time, newest release, “Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One.”
At first, I had it on my computer speakers, but I couldn’t really hear it over the noise of the manual treadmill belt. So, I donned my mp3 player and earplugs and mounted my treadmill for a workout – physical and mental.
I started hearing little snippets of wisdom in-between my conscious readings from the display in front of me…watching and mentally logging numbers of “how far, how many calories, how fast,” etc.
I went for a quarter mile and it felt really good – especially considering I am still dealing with a tear of the medial meniscus from a work-related injury that’s all tied up in Workman’s Comp hearings! (Part of my sense of frustration).
I look a lot like Frankenstein when I walk – still – but part of my restlessness comes from knowing that I’ve been stuck too long in “injury mode.” I realized that I need to get on with healing my leg. I followed my “walk” with some modified lifting of weights (arms) and stationary punches (I’ve REALLY missed my Tae-bo Gold Routine!).
All the while I was listening to Dr Joe’s lecture – one that I have been listening to repeatedly lately. When I finished my physical exercise, I felt really good. “Exercise” had been on my days’ list of accomplishments that I had written out the night before. It felt good to have that already done.
Then I sat down and started to write. He was talking about addictions and personality – about how 95% of who we are is acquired from the influences of others, which I know from previous studies with Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor.
Then I got really excited when Dr Joe started talking about habits – and the definition of a habit as “when the body is the mind.”
When we feel stuck – we have to look at “what have we memorized?” What feelings and experiences have we cemented in – even though we may say we want to change? If we’re not changing it’s because we’ve hard-wired past body-mind programs which then become habits.
If we memorize (hard-wire) an emotional reaction and stay there for a few days – it becomes a “mood.” If we prolong it further it becomes our “temperament.” Over a prolonged period of time that temperament – “living by the same emotional reaction” over and over again turns into a personality trait – which means we’re totally living in the PAST!
THAT was my “AHA!” MOMENT!
Recovery Programs refer to a person’s “defects of character.” I’ve always maintained that I am NOT defective. I am a child of God and God doesn’t make junk!
BUT then I made the connection to what Dr. Joe is talking about…and realized that the “defect” is the faulty emotional reaction that has been hard-wired in our brain based on a past experience that we haven’t been able to free ourselves from. Why?
All emotions produce chemicals in our bodies and in the brain. We can become addicted to those chemicals in the same way we can become addicted to alcohol or other drugs, food, or gambling, or sex, or any destructive behavior.
We try to change but we hit a wall because, as Dr. Joe describes it, “I can’t go beyond this emotion because the chemicals are so addictive.”
We can’t go beyond the emotion because someone or something knocks us so far out of balance as to prevent us from being able to make our way back.
That’s living in the past. What is it that we have to do in order to live happy and free?
CLEAR AWAY THE WRECKAGE OF THE PAST!
I have had the privilege of working with recovering alcoholics for over 40 years. One of the greatest pitfalls I have seen is the seeming inability to let go of the guilt and shame of their past. Recovering alcoholic/addicts are told to remember their last drunk/usage – so that they don’t return to using. But that means the individual is keeping that experience alive by constantly repeating it. Thus, staying mired in that past that they are trying to resolve and move forward from!
Besides, there is scientific evidence that “memory” is not so much a function of recall, as it is a function of the mind filling in a story, in order to accommodate the emotions, we’ve memorized.
So, to keep “re-living” a past occurrence in order to avoid that same mistake in the future is a basic fallacy, because the brain is making up a “greater than” trauma with each recollection.
That begins to trap us, and we find ourselves living in a past that didn’t actually happen (at least to the severity that we tend to remember it.)
We don’t have to DWELL in the past to learn from it. In fact, we can’t afford to.
Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor teaches us that we only have THIS MOMENT. She reminds us that “Energy follows thought” If we’re focused on the past, we’re living in the past.
In order to liberate ourselves, we MUST Let It GO.
This is true for ALL of us – because our habits are hard-wired memorized emotional reactions from past experiences that no longer serve us except that we’ve become addicted to the chemicals produced by them. (And then we wonder why we keep repeating the same behavior over and over again, even though we set goals and swear off, or swear on – determined to change, yet we don’t).
Dr. Joe asks, “What emotion have you memorized – that you’re living by day after day – that you think is you? That’s not who you are…that emotion is just a record of your past experience.”
So, what are “defects of character?” Memorized emotions that we think are us.
But they aren’t us – they aren’t who we are – they are what we are holding onto.
So, whatever “dark secret” we may be carrying around with us, whatever horrible atrocity we think we’ve committed, Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor reminds us that we are loved!
I like to say we are not bad people trying to get better – we are good people who have gotten off course.
If anything can be called “defective” – it’s our memory of past events – of what we are holding onto – and that can be changed.
It’s a choice.
One of the greatest examples of intelligent and courageous living I’ve learned in my association with Pa’Ris’Ha Taylor, simply stated, is she greets each new day as a new life. Really.
That means not carrying forward any judgement, any drama…a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g…from the previous day’s interaction with an individual. Ever try that? It’s no small feat!
I don’t know that I’ve honestly been able to accomplish that yet. I try – but it takes a lot of practice to just wipe the slate clean from the day before and give a person the clear opportunity to be a different, better person.
Some might judge that as being weak, but I have witnessed time and time again, a power that has come with that practice that I am in awe of and am continually amazed.
Some time ago I found myself in a situation of coming into contact daily with an individual who had determined that I am some kind of “mortal enemy” that has to be destroyed! Let me tell you, looking into those eyes wasn’t easy!
But to do so having released all thoughts, judgement, and conclusions from the day before, coming into contact with her with no carryover? I was at the “watch my back” phase of development for quite some time. But, as I constantly had to remind myself, I can always strive to practice “A New Day, A New Life.”
After all, it’s in the intention of creating a new behavior, forming new neural nets, or “re-wiring” as they say in Brain Science these days, that the seeds of achieving that change exist.
By being consciously aware of the desire to change, I am one step closer to breaking those old patterns and forming new ones. “Creating new neuron networks.”
Until I was able to achieve that separation from a sense of injury, distrust, etc., I would smile, look her in the eye, and strive to remember that she is a child of God, as am I.
-DJA
