Break Your Repeating Patterns

Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 135

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This week's podcast is a really simple little hack as to work out what's going on with you.

Sometimes we've got patterns that we might notice going on in our lives that seem to repeat and the characters may change and the scenery may change. But it seems to me that the plot line is remarkably similar to stuff that you've revisited time and time again.

And if you want to try and work out what some of the patterns that are driving some of your responses and getting some of these repetitions coming up for you. A really good little hack that I find for myself is to free write on a piece of paper and begin with the words. "I'm just the kind of person who..."

And what will come up for you is a whole load of the ingrained thoughts that you have about yourself, about how you hold yourself in the world, about how you move within the structures and the powers and the places that you move around with a whole load of beliefs that you have picked up over a lifetime.

And when they are down on this piece of paper, you'll have something in front of you that enables you to be able to take a really hard look at them and work out firstly, whether the things that you still believe and probably most importantly, whether they're things that you want to carry on telling yourself. Whether these the stories that when you repeat frequently are getting you the kind of plot line, story narrative that you want to be living in.

How does it make you feel when you read this stuff back? And are those feelings things that you want to keep repeating? Are these emotions that you're enjoying? And if not, what would you like to do about them?

When you look at these feelings, ask yourself, where does an emotion like drive me? What are the outcomes of me talking to myself in this way? What are the outcomes of me telling myself stories like this regularly? Because when you can begin to unravel some of the common phrases that go on in your head that allow you to believe that this is just the kind of person that you are, that you are just the kind of person who does things like this. When we can start looking at some of this stuff, investigating whether it is building the kind of life that we want, we have a chance to pause and to breathe and to perhaps make some different choices.

If this is something you'd like to learn how to do. That's what I coach on and it's what we all do together over at Self Care School. But this first step is one that you can take solo. And if you don't feel like you quite have the momentum to be able to move to that next step of going, okay, here's the stuff that keeps coming up and now I don't know what to do with it. That's what I'm here for. If you'd like some extra help, I'd love to hear from you.

And if you'd just like to begin on the exercise on your own, still be super interesting to hear what comes up. Do drop me an email and let me know. I hope it's a useful little, little bit of homework this week. Have a glorious week.