Natural Patterns

New Years resolutions come and go. It’s all about starting new patterns that we hope will change our lives for the better. However, a new pattern doesn’t happen without an effort to make it stick.

Or perhaps only when the effort appears to be effortless. Today I was reading some of the pieces in the Inspired 2 Write challenge. We are four days in and I notice that people are already writing far longer pieces than they expected to do. I’m delighted that they are feeling comfortable enough to do so. It made me think about what makes our patterns turn into habits that we never even think about. After all, getting the momentum going to make changes can take a lot of energy. How does it settle down into ‘I’ve always done this’?

When I think about the way I change my patterns it seems that after the first few tentative steps I hit a barrier or two. Perhaps I’ve started with a niggling doubt that I can do what I hope to do in the first place. That was certainly the case with my painting. I was waiting for my work to be judged. And because no one was, I stepped in and judged it myself. Of course I am always my harshest critic. That’s a very old habit that I’m slowly changing. I find it comes in the way we are trained to judge one another. Especially if backed up with the idea that competition is all about beating the other person.

Recognising one barrier quickly led me to notice another one. Letting go of old patterns is scary when I don’t know where the new ones will take me.

That was certainly true of my mediumship. I found I could communicate well. All of a sudden I applied the breaks. I slowed myself down. What did it mean if I could do this thing so naturally? After all, I wasn’t even sure I believed in the Spirit World. If it was real I would have to change quite a few of my assumptions about life. And quite a lot of my patterns. The scale of the changes required frightened me. So did the lack of clarity about who I would be at the other side of the changes. As I recognised my self-sabotage I pushed myself to keep going.

I started to look for the things I enjoyed about my new patterns. And noticed another way in which I was resisting new habits. There was a tinge of ‘this is too good to be true’. I discovered I had a belief that I wasn’t allowed to enjoy myself. Life, work, everything should be as challenging as possible. Somewhere I had learned a pattern that linked to value. My achievements were only valuable when there had been a lot of hard work to get them. Yet the Universe doesn’t really work like that. Some people seem to achieve in an easy, joyful way. Making things hard for myself had to go.

It was then that I noticed my lack of consistency. I kept making myself promises to do things but ending up not doing them.

Of course that could be because I didn’t really want to do them in the first place. It’s amazing how many of our changes are the suggestions of other people and not really our choice. I had a couple of years trying to sort out if I was doing something my way or only because someone else said it was the way it must be done. Mediums have individual styles. When I realised that point I stopped trying to connect in the way other people seemed to do. I must say my mediumship improved. It was all to do with me being consistently me. Having patterns of working that were natural to me.

Now I know that when I start something I will meet those same blocks. Unlearning my conditioning is a work in progress. But I also know that I can make new patterns stick if it’s a change I truly want for me. I will find a way for it to work and become consistent. Like my blogging. It’s all about making each new habit easier for me by recognising my reluctance, acknowledging the feelings and confirming that I do want to do something a new way. So whether it’s personal fitness, video blogging or writing my next book I’m looking forward to the time when each of these has become old patterns.

Day 416 of my blogging challenge.