Patterns

A few years ago I was with my Mum in the car and I was (once again) complaining about how horribly my then-boyfriend was treating me. I was obviously making all sorts of excuses and defending his behaviour at the same time, but more than anything I was saying what had already been said many, many times before, with the honest surprise and shock that happens when you’re only daring to look at things on the micro level. 

But my Mum, bless her, wasn’t looking at the situation from a micro level, she was macro all the way and she could see the relationship for what it was… Like everything in our lives it was a series of patterns, and this particular pattern was a shit one.

Rather eloquently, after I raised my hands in exasperation and said “I just don’t know what to do! He changes everyday!” Mum said, “why don’t you look at his patterns, you can trust them”. I instantly hated her, because I had that instant foresight of spontaneously knowing that this particular nugget of truth would be the downfall of the ‘relationship’ I was in. 

That humble little sentence filled with aeons of wisdom ended up transforming my life in ways neither of us could have predicted. After a day or so of looking at the relationship and the patterns we had established as a couple I realised I could look years into the future and see what sort of a life we were building. Whilst my heart was broken, I ended that relationship with a clarity I hadn’t known up until then… I wasn’t giving up or potentially throwing away the best man I would ever find… I was simply stopping a pattern of behaviour that had been established on day 1 and had carried on for 4 years. I knew exactly what would happen next, and then after that, and after that, and on and on and on, until the end of time. I disrupted the pattern by ending it, and he had full freedom to do the same and fight for us, but, true to his pattern, he didn’t. 

While I was nursing my broken heart and with the idea of patterns now strung across my awareness I turned my attention to other parts of my life; my job, my exercise regimen, the food I ate and didn’t, the things I said to myself, the clothes I bought, and all of a sudden I was Neo in the Matrix… Patterns were everywhere!

I could see how up until that point I had made decisions based on what others wanted for me, as opposed to seeking my own counsel.

I saw how small my list of ‘safe’ foods were, and how my seemingly varied diet was actually a tightly controlled ship with very little room for play. 

I knew verbatim what the voice in my head was going to say, and I knew emphatically that it wasn’t going to be a nice thing.

I could see my excuses for what they were, continuations of patterns that someone or something else had put in place, and up until that awakening, I had been following them blindly.

Don’t get me wrong, patterns and habits play a beautiful part in my life. I love routine and thrive when I know what needs to get done next, but there’s a difference between patterns that allow you to grow and those that condemn you to smaller and smaller plots of land. 

If you have a pattern of waking up in the morning and running through a list of reasons why you’re horrible, guess what you’re going to be doing first thing in the morning 5 years from now…?

If you have a pattern of getting mad at yourself every time you put a brush to canvas, guess what’s going to happen whenever you work up the courage to create…?

If you have a pattern of saying mean things to your reflection, guess what’s going to happen every single time you see it….?

Just like pulling up a seat for our Slug’s, and saying hello to it every morning, if we seek to find the patterns of our behaviours and the ways that we are unconsciously reinforcing the shitty parts of our lives, the sooner we will be able to disrupt and replace them with something a bit nicer and more fulfilling. 

We are not unconscious beings that things happen to. Or maybe we are, I don’t bloody know, but at the very least, I don’t believe we are destined to exist in a muddy hell hole. So let’s retrace our steps and find what patterns led us to end up there.

xxxALi