Your habits may not be your fault, but they are your responsibility. To help you move forward and overcome old habits, it is important to understand them and recognize your responsibility toward them. In today's session we're going to talk about what habits are, how they come about, and what you can do about them.
The first step is to examine your own habits. What habits do you want to change? Does it have something to do with food, smoking, drinking, drugs, gambling, obsessive thoughts, a lack of self-esteem or romance? Maybe a phobia or fears about flying or driving on freeways. Or perhaps going out of the house, public speaking, interviewing or putting yourself out there. How long have they been there?
Sometimes you might find that they just have been recently triggered as if they came out of nowhere. Others have been dealing with certain habits in phobias for years before they come in to see me. Being aware of your habits and fears is an important aspect of moving forward.
Are you really ready to let them go? To resolve them? I want you to discover there's a part of your mind that doesn't want to let them go. That your habits were created for a reason. Everything you do, every behavior you have is there for a reason. Some part of you wants to continue that way and creates habits to keep you safe and secure and under your ego’s watchful yet controlling eye. It is important to be aware of this because as we progress you will come upon your ego’s resistance.
So, what does it mean to say that your habits aren't your fault? The truth is that most of your habits and issues may not be your fault. If you have listened to these podcasts or watched my videos you know that we discuss the power of your subconscious mind. It is both powerful and controlling. Remember that for those first 16 years of your life you were being programmed by your experiences. As a child you were in Alpha and Theta brainwaves, the same brainwaves that we use for hypnosis because they create a very suggestible state of mind.
You don’t fully develop the analytical mind, which is called Beta brainwave, until you are about 16 years old. After that you no longer have to believe anything anybody tells you. In this stage you try to take charge of your life, for your teenage self is a powerful part of you. But it is up against the subconscious mind and the programmed beliefs of those first 16 years of your life.
Remember in these early years you were a sponge, absorbing everything said to you and you believed it all. You did not have the ability to say no to it on a subconscious level. We often talk about a client’s graduating high school class and ask them how many of their fellow classmates were able to be their true, loving, vulnerable, open, authentic selves? Probably zero. Everybody is affected by their upbringing so that by those teenage years your self-worth and self-esteem is not always the best.
They learned how to put out an image to protect themselves whether it's by becoming the life of the party, the class clown, or the bully, all of these are protective mechanisms to cover up and hide their deeper wounded selves. In the same way others become shy or an introvert, it’s also a way of protecting them, and there are many other ways as well. The only people that really appear to be confident are the narcissists, and it's not a healthy way to be either.
Because you are programmed by life, we can safely say that your issues, your behaviors, your habits are not your fault. Your subconscious mind was in charge and in control, unfortunately programmed by too many negative experiences while growing up. Experiences created your core beliefs which in turn created your programming and habit patterns.
With this in mind I think you see now why we make the statement that your habits and behaviors were not your fault. When you closely examine your life choices and actions you will discover that most of the important decisions you made throughout your life were actually made by your imperfect, resistant and sometimes irrational subconscious mind.
They weren’t your fault, for the healthy you, though small and often powerless, was not able to overcome the mistakes of your subconscious mind. You were probably not even aware that some part of you was in control of your life. Even if the decisions caused pain and suffering, they still fulfilled a deep, subconscious belief you had about yourself as to what you deserved or what felt comfortable for you or that it avoided deeper pain and regret.
When clients come to see me the first thing we discuss is that the healthy part of them is like a five-year-old compared to their subconscious parent. A five-year old doesn't have much power over their critical, controlling parents. And your parents were programmed by their parents and on and on it goes back seemingly forever. We are the result of our programming, and often that isn’t a healthy experience.
Of course, you will have individual variations in parents, siblings, family, friends and experiences. The important aspect for you is to examine your own past. You own beliefs. Which were really yours? Most come from others. Only later in life do we truly begin, hopefully, to throw off the programming by others, by society, and examine with clearer eyes and a more intelligent mind what is true, and what is false.
You will discover that many aspects of your life are great. Maybe you have healthy relationships, or successful careers, make a good living, have great friends, possess a kind, loving nature, and so forth. These are the results of having a healthy subconscious mind. Nearly everyone has some positive aspects to their life that flow from this healthier state of being. We are only concerned with transforming the less than healthy aspects of your life.
Now it is your responsibility to heal yourself. We're not letting you off completely for now it is time to deal the hand you were dealt. Like the old saying, “None of us can choose the time of our life, but we can control how we respond to it.”
Even though the wounds of the past were hurtful and deep, it’s time to address, resolve and release them. This is your responsibility as the healthy parent of your being. Now you will discover that your daily life becomes your teacher, for it will trigger your issues through relationships.
An example is what's being triggered when someone says something negative or hurtful about you. Or perhaps at work your boss dismisses your suggestions and you feel wounded or angry. Whatever issues arise in your present day becomes the path we follow to discover where those original hurts, wounds and fears originated. The ones that are triggered throughout your day. It is your responsibility now, your opportunity for growth, to trace and resolve them. Even though these old wounds were not your fault, they represent a part of you that now you have the opportunity to transform.
As you experience various emotional triggers, you will find that have ignited old wounds and issues that originated over the first 16 years of your life. Some occurred as a child, or older child, or teen. Now you will find these younger parts within you and connect, experience and resolve their old issues with your loving help. As you resolve their issues and healthily process the old wounds you will find that the present-day issues also go away as they no longer trigger an old, unresolved issue within your subconscious mind anymore.
These regressions to find and resolve your younger part’s issues releases their healthy, amazing energy back into your life. You discover that these disowned selves that were once dissociated from you now unleash a healthy, powerful energy of love, self-esteem and passion into your present-day life, which in turn transforms how you perceive your daily activities. It’s like having new eyes or ears to experience life in a whole new way. Imagine the freedom you have from fear and anxiety. How would that change your life? To feel confident and loving in relationships? To resolve old issues?
In future podcasts we will explore this more, but right now realize that your old habits, issues and fears will be the pathway toward a new life. Then whether you want to resolve old habits about food or smoking or drinking or whatever, you actually are also creating a healthier you on so many levels.
Yes, your habits, issues and fears aren’t your fault, but they are your opportunity for transformation. If you are listening to this now there is a healthy part of you that wants to change, that needs to change, yet a part of you still resists this change.
Remember, please avoid wasting energy by beating yourself up for what the old, resistive subconscious mind created. It’s a waste of time, it's a waste of energy, for nothing else matters except what you do from this moment onward. I want you to feel more empowered and that means we're looking forward and enjoying the present moment. No longer going back in the past and finding yourself complaining or feeling bad about yourself. This keeps you stuck.
Of course, it takes some time to release the past, but once you understand it’s methods, it’s issues, it’s habits, move on. As Carl Jung once said, “What you resist, persists.” This is especially true about the subconscious mind.
As you might have heard me say, using “Until Now”, allows you to control what you think and feel in the present moment. To have you see people in your present, daily life as gift givers for they actually bring the gift of triggering your issue so that you can resolve the old issue and move on. You’re not concerned about that person for right now you are focused upon moving forward and letting go of the past. This is how we were meant to experience life’s challenges, as short-term gifts for self-fulfillment. No one wants to do this for long and thankfully the rewards, the outcome, is tremendous and makes it worthwhile. We want to get to a place where you no longer are triggered and then you reap the rewards of your efforts.
This is what it’s like to live your life in the now as your authentic self. Joyous, healthy, fulfilled and free to be who we were meant to be.