How do you get out of your own way?
How can you let go of things that you hold onto so tightly?
Our patterns and habits drive us, some of which we are unaware of. So, how do you become aware of the way that you do things? Pay attention to how you react. Sometimes it’s not ideal and that’s ok. The good news is that you’re becoming more aware of what’s coming up for you.
Getting out of your own way is unlearning the patterns and habits that we’re so used to. If we’re used to being perfectionists, then it can be challenging when you don’t have the perfect delivered project, when customer service is less than ideal, or when there is chaos in your work day and you feel like you need to fix it right away. Or if we’re used to always having certainty before we take action and we don’t have all the information to move forward, it can shake us up and cause overwhelm/confusion.
Disrupting our own patterns and changing behaviours doesn’t happen overnight. It’s always work-in-progress. After all, it takes years of building these habits and behaviours and often, we aren’t even aware that we have these habits until someone brings up our stuff and we get triggered. One of my teachers used to say, ‘when your stuff comes up, thank it for coming up to your awareness so that you can resolve it.’
It’s not easy to resolve your ‘stuff’ as it’s so much easier to just ignore it, shove it under the rug and hope that it will go away forever. The more challenging part and the part that requires patience, growth and commitment, is to keep working on yourself, for yourself. You may not see the gains right away, though as someone reminded me, you have to trust the process and know that you are moving in the right direction by making the effort to get better.
When things don’t go the way that you hoped they would or you don’t react in the way that you wanted to react, forgive yourself and remind yourself that there’s another opportunity to improve and get better. It’s challenging, I’m going to be honest. It’s also fulfilling if you just give up just before you succeed. Many times, we give up just before we are about to succeed as it seems ‘too hard’ and it doesn’t feel like things are going anywhere. Trust yourself to follow through and know that you will get to where you want to be and most importantly, be the person that you want to become.
It can feel scary as human beings, we like our patterns and habits; it keeps us feeling safe. The path of least resistance is to do nothing at all. Though, it also prevents us from growing and getting out of our own way to improve and get better. When we improve and get better, we contribute by modelling this example to others around us so that we can all improve and get better. One step at a time.
