Tuesday 9 October 2012

What have your created?.... and more importantly, is it what you want?

Where do I start with this topic, it has been brewing within me now for weeks and I have been unable to put finger to keyboard.
So, lets start here - What is the life you have created?
Is it alive, do you feel the blood pumping through your veins every day and think YES! this is exactly the life I want to live?
So, if not, why not?
As I said to a client the other day, If not YOU, then WHO and if not NOW, then WHEN?  Well?
So what are we waiting for?
What's stopping us?
Let me have a stab at answering that question from my own personal perspective... and let me say at this stage, that I have a great life, I travel, I have great friends, I fantastic job, wonderful experiences and there is still one thing missing!
So, here is what I know about me - what stops me in having the life I want, is the patterns and behaviours and traps of the past which I keep repeating over and over again in my life!
Yes, and you guessed it, of course, I keep blaming other people for them or worse than that, I don't actually take personal responsibility and take a stand for myself and say, OK well if this is what you truly, then what is stopping you having it.
And, we all know it's not that simple either, there are mortgages and bills to pay, kids to educate and feed blah, blah, blah, blah.  Most of them are Gremlins anyway...... typically.
I have been saying for the last 10 years of my life that I want to have a Partner who will love me and trust me and live life to the full with me and, as yet, this superman has not materialised.  I wonder why?
Well let me tell you why, because I keep being tempted back into and old relationship, which does not serve me, which is not healthy for either of us and which does not fulfill either of us.  Why do I keep going back? Because, it’s familiar, I know how to be in it, the brokenness of it's circumstances are cosy. 

So, I am breathing now because I want to share with you a discovery I made this week about my own personal behaviour which has 'blown my socks off'. I realised that because of my interpretation of the way I was brought up, I created a belief around love and connection, that means (up until now) it is my responsibility to make sure that I ensure harmony, personally, in any loving relationship that I have had, and, that it is not a dual responsibility, that it my sole role.
It comes from having a Father who was not emotionally intelligent, who was educated by his parents that, if you wanted kids to do as they were told, you just stopped talking to them and engaging with them when they did something bad.  And, that you only reengaged with them when they had pleased you enough that you knew you were back in charge and that they wouldn't do that thing again, at least, not for a while anyway.
Can you imagine how frustrating that was for me as a Child, when all I wanted to know was why this? or why that? how does this work? how come that family is different to ours? one of the unwritten rules was you never ask questions like that, you know, the ones that are hard to answer.

I was christened Kissinger by my family when I was in my 20's because I was the one who always made the peace in the family (or at least this is how I remember it), between Brothers and Sisters, Husbands and Wives, Kids and Parents etc. until I reached the point where I was exhausted and I refused to do it any longer.  Little did I know that by then the 'seed' was planted and I was going to do that in all my intimate relationships for the foreseeable future, or the next 30 years to be precise!
What was the question that uncovered this 'little gem' for me?  I asked myself, why it is always me who reaches out to people to resolve conflicts, and where did that come from?  There were a lot of  conflicts in our house.  Not the useful ones, where you are embrace each others difference, and create some new understanding from that, the ones where one person was right, (usually the older one or the one who could shout the loudest) and the other was wrong.  That was, of course, just the opinion of one person in the discussion but it seemed to create a false sense of achievement to them that they had 'won' something or achieved something my pretending that them perceiving themselves to be right had actually made any difference in resolving anything.
Anyway, don't get me wrong here, I know my Parents did the best job they could, under the circumstances, and I love them dearly. Where I am pointing you to look, is where you did, like me, take on a belief about something that actually does not belong to you and was never yours in the first place.  And, if you find that belief is stopping you being fulfilled, keeping you in a relationship you don't want or a job you don't enjoy or a career that turns you cold.  Then ask yourself, what am I waiting for? What's stopping me?
And if you need one, or haven't already got one, then go get a Coach or someone who can help you dig into this self limiting belief so that it stops having such a hold over you.  
  
Why? So, that you can create the life you really do want to lead.
Don't do like I did and wait all these years to work it out!  
I feel like I have freed up 30 years of 'being stuck' around this topic, quite an amazing experience!
There is a lot more I could say around this discovery and suffice to say, I think I have said enough for you to get the gist of where I am pointing you.  
Wishing you happiness and joy!