Let’s get straight to it.
There are 4 things that hold us back from our perfect life:
Our habits
Our identity
Our emotional addictions
and how we define perfect
our Habits
The more we are locked into our habits, the more we are locked into our current experiences. Our persisting habits lock us into reliving our past and continuing to make it our future.
This could be a wonderful thing if we love every aspect of our lives, and a scary thing if we yearn so badly to be somewhere else and don’t recognize our habits.
Even if we’re the lucky ones to love our lives, we continue to want to evolve and take that next step in service, and that involves change, which involves a change in habit.
Simply desiring change in your life without doing much else, including starting a new habit and then dropping it “temporarily” because life got in the way, doesn’t make change.
What we do (or don’t do) over and over again has a direct influence over our thoughts, our mood, our energy, and our sense of self.
Our thoughts affect our emotions, our emotions affect our mood, our mood affects our energy, and when these persist, they shape our personality.
Which becomes our identity. Which gives us our overall life experience….
…informed by our emotions, moods, and energy, now completely memorized and on auto-pilot.
Let’s be honest, the idea of changing our identity scares the crap out of us. Yet we yearn to change our experiences, at least in some parts of our lives.
When we try to change even the simple things, like getting up a little earlier, stretching, sitting still in quiet space, asking for help, or remembering to drink water, we find ourselves pushing against our current identity, if not consciously, then unconsciously. It doesn’t feel right to do the action that would make change because somehow it bumps up against the familiar, which is woven into who we believe ourselves to be. It feels off, not the right time, not important enough, at least for today, we say.
our Identity
When we identify as a specific type of person, or being a certain type of way, it’s difficult to act differently. Which is why we (let’s just say unintentionally) push that responsibility of change on the people around us; it’s so much easier to do that, isn’t it?
This makes us less adaptable, and access to ease and intimacy, which are ingredients to the perfect life, get more out of reach. Things become a struggle.
Here’s an example of how our identity gets in the way of change:
If you identify as a smoker trying to quit smoking…
You’re a smoker… and smokers smoke.
You’re trying to quit. You’ve identified with trying, not with having quit. I’m trying to quit keeps you a smoker, struggling. Having quit, and saying “I quit smoking”, not just with your words but with commitment from your entire body, creates a full conversion of the mind.
How to break through: practice identifying as a non-smoker, and as someone who makes healthy choices, until you fully identify.
My personal example:
I worked on identifying as a writer. It was something I thought about delving into for years and had a love-hate relationship with. I was blocked about giving it my full attention and carving out any time for it. I waited for inspiration to hit, and it hit infrequently and at the most inopportune times (to be honest, all times were inopportune; I was “busy”).
When I fully committed to be a writer, the first handful of times I called myself a writer felt strange; like a lie, like I was an imposter. I had to (1) teach my body emotionally to feel what it would feel like to be a writer, and (2) I started acting like one.
Today, I can tell you that I’m a writer in the same way I can tell you that my name is Savitree.
Up until this point, I carried a story that writing was hard. I identified writing to be hard, and it was SO hard. Today, it’s a morning discipline, meaning it’s a daily practice. It’s nourishing and fulfilling. It’s connective tissue. It helps me work through and deepen my knowledge as well as my humanity. It teaches me to break things down and think about how the words I choose might land on you. It makes me a better teacher. It heightens and eases walking the talk. It keeps my purpose front and center.
I also realized (once again) that discipline is only a struggle when our desire to stay the same (comfort in familiarity) exceeds our desire to be who we want to be, which is to step into our untethered, true selves. When we are ready, we take on new habits like a champ because a new identity has formed.
our Emotional Addictions
When we act outside of our normal, it can feel good initially because change can feel refreshing. Change opens up our minds, and we get a glimpse of where it can take us.
Then our ego gets wind of it, and the moment it senses some weakness, stress, or exhaustion in us, it prompts us to explode or implode. We experience deep withdrawal symptoms and we fall back to the tempting and familiar emotions, resetting the old mood, energy, and identity. When we come back to consciousness, we feel completely deflated.
Here are some examples of emotional addictions:
Making ourselves right by making someone else wrong or at fault: the rush of power we get from being right courses through our veins. It’s a power dose of a mixture of chemicals produced by our body to feel pleasure and dominance. No need for external drugs to make us feel the temporary spike that breaks down relationships.
Sense of unworthiness: when we lack clarity, we choose to feel not good enough instead of moving through the very thing we’re unclear about to get clarity, and in doing so, we further deny our ability to see what’s important to us, and what to do next.
Feeling tired: and for this, we take afternoon naps or stimulants. But are we really tired? Or is our exhaustion and our cravings habits to hide from ourselves, from the discomfort of BEing, and even from the natural pleasures, denying the opportunity to expand our capacities and find Joy?
These are excellent moments to step back, sit tall, close your eyes if possible, come to your breath, and feel those uncomfortable feelings, the tantrums your ego is throwing at you in order to try and save it’s vital role to keep the same ol’ status quo going in your life.
The trick is to practice catching these moments earlier. And then to teach yourself to act greater than you feel.
To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.
- Dr. Joe Dispenza
This is easier to do once you’ve let go of your past identity and decide to trust that you’ll be more than okay.
How we define Perfection
Let’s bridge the gap between unachievable perfection and the notion that we are perfect just as we are, and that everything is already perfect as they are.
Consider this:
While SKILL takes regular practice, getting the EXPERIENCE OF PERFECTION takes zero effort and zero time.
It happens spontaneously the moment you decide to trust in yourself and where you are in the present moment.
What many of us don’t realize is that perfection is in the practice, or the journey. We only get frustrated by lack of perfection when we confuse perfection to have an end point. This thing called practice makes us better at what we practice. There is no end to getting better. As long as we keep at it honestly, we will continue to better ourselves and grow. And that is perfection.
Trusting this, and trusting yourself, gives you the experience of perfection beyond the imaginable. When you trust who you are, you can spontaneously make the right decisions case by case because you have discernment and intuition on your side, and you are grounded in your deepest values and priorities.
When you practice trusting, you begin to understand that the Universe is conspiring in your favor… as well as everyone else’s; no one is left out, not one. It has the broadest view and brings lives together to experience, in one event, what each individual needs, simultaneously. Free will allows each of us to decide what we make of, and do about, things.
Free will allows you to change your habits, identity, and responses according to the experiences you wish to enjoy in your life.
Trusting helps you let go of the parts of your identity that you need to move on from, in order to move forward with new habits that will help you shed your old self and evolve into your next most radiant Self. This journey is intrinsically perfection.
There is no such thing as staying the same. We evolve or we stagnate. Life, with all of its inspirations and irritations, prompts us to choose evolution (change).
Busyness and reactivity keeps us experiencing the same because we filter things from the past, from what we think we know according to our past experiences… but more accurately, it wears us down and causes stagnation.
Stillness and response-ability, on the other hand, prompts listening and awareness, and hands us the next move.
So trust yourself. The part of you that loves you so much and wants you to keep thriving.
Take a deep inhale and experience yourself as complete, opening up to the new and present moment.
Take a complete exhale and let go of the old.
Love, Savitree
So beautifully said! Being still always opens up our thoughts to the fullness of what is possible, and connecting with new creative ideas.🤔
breathe in..Exhale..ahhhh..I love that. Everyday is a struggle all in itself but you make up your mind to become a better person then you were yesterday with healthier habits makes the difference