Who Are You? : Part 2

Welcome to Your Crisis: How to Use the Power of Crisis to Create the Life You Want
by Laura Day

(Page 2 of 3)

Eventually balance will reestablish itself, of course, but the ecosystem will never be the same.

A tiny shift in perception or behavior can create monumental changes in the internal dynamics that you call your life.

We have all had the experience of being in a darkened theater when an exit door unexpectedly opens, flooding the darkness with light and transforming our perception of our surroundings and our place within those surroundings. We often live our lives avoiding those rays of light for fear of what they will illuminate, sometimes through small shifts in our growth or behavior and often through the imposition of others or of outside events. When that happens we must adjust to a new ecosystem and our new position within it.

Outer Changes Require and Reflect Inner Changes

Change is also difficult because we often attribute it to bad luck, to unconscious personal shortcomings, or to external forces beyond our knowledge or control. In other words we often refuse to take any responsibility for the major changes and upheavals that occur in our lives.

Some changes are beyond our direct control, such as a random act of violence or a random act of nature. Our response to any change, however, is within our control. Our response to a change is a powerful agent in how that change plays itself out in our lives.

Why do resolutions fail? On New Year's Eve, people across the world prepare to start their lives afresh. A new year; a new life. They prepare their New Year's resolutions with great optimism and anticipation, welcoming in another new year with a list of challenges that they have failed at repeatedly in the past.

The next morning they awaken with the commitment that they will break a lifetime of habits in one day. They will lose ten pounds. Become successful. Find true love. Improve their marriages. Stop procrastinating. Get their tempers under control. Spend more time with their children. Making resolutions is comforting; all is well with the world.

The only problem, as we secretly know, is that this approach to behavior modification does not work. Indeed, setting ourselves overwhelming tasks is a formula for failure and self-hatred. We form our habits and behaviors over a lifetime. We become passionately attached to even the most unfulfilling ways of being merely because they are familiar. What makes us think, despite all our experiences to the contrary, that merely resolving to change leads to enduring change?

Many people find achieving lasting change difficult because they focus on the wrong "side of the equation." Something as practical as losing weight, for example, is not simply a physical change, but rather an outward reflection of an inner change your self has undergone. Most weight-loss plans fail because the person involved views the change - weight loss - as the process itself rather than the result of a process. The process of any lasting weight loss occurs when we become a person who does not need to overeat, a person who seeks to be active rather than sedentary, a person who fills her needs in ways other than through eating.

Losing weight, then, is merely the product of changing your self. Take a moment to grasp fully the importance of this truth. Outer changes reflect inner changes. To achieve in the world whatever you want - whether it is losing weight or gaining a promotion - focus on the inner changes you need to make, and the outer changes will follow naturally and inevitably.

Your every experience programs your response to future experiences, until you choose the experiences in the world that confirm a particular belief system. One way to define yourself, then, is in terms of your beliefs.

Sometimes you misjudge the world, and your core beliefs are challenged, if not shattered. A man you thought was going to be with you forever moves to another city. Your company eliminates your position. You experience a car accident. Sometimes you encounter a major, unexpected change.

Notice that when your reality challenges your beliefs, and confronts you with the possibility that you will give up those beliefs, you feel betrayed. All loss creates a sense of betrayal.

When loss or other upheaval ruptures your beliefs, you no longer exist in the same way - but you are provided with the possibility of a new beginning.

Regarding the world around us, our beliefs can act as spotlights, but they can also act as blinders. Our beliefs hide any fact that threatens them and highlight any fact that justifies or reinforces them. Our belief systems, that is, excel at self-defense! We all have our blind spots - especially about anything that challenges who we think we are and what we've based our lives on.

Crisis occurs because our beliefs are so challenged that they no longer have these boundaries in place. We are thrown into a search for new beliefs on which to pattern our actions and base our lives.

The great spiritual leaders throughout history had their beliefs so challenged that their entire beings were transformed. In allowing themselves to be transformed, they created brilliant examples for others to follow.

Copyright © 2006 by Laura Day

About the Author

Laura Day has been teaching her private seminar, "Practical Intuition," all over the world for the past ten years. Her students include doctors, journalists, CEO's, financial analysts, and celebrities. She lives in New York City with her son, Samson.