It’s funny how often we hold ourselves to detrimental situations and relationships using the most silly excuses we could imagine!
Of course change can be scary, and the idea of leaving behind something that will mean an important change in our lives can produce a lot of anxiety. In order to protect ourselves from this feeling, our minds create as many excuses as needed to discourage the change and avoiding taking action.
The problem comes when the excuses skillfully created by our minds “overrun” our common sense and even in the presence of a situation where we find our well-being in danger, we are unable to react appropriately.
Whether we believe we are stuck in an abusive relationship or in an unfulfilling career, most of the reasons we have to avoid change are actually a creation of our minds to protect ourselves from the harm that could come to us in a new, uncontrollable environment.
We Hold The Key
We are just as stuck as we allow ourselves to believe.
I am not saying that the excuses that discourage our actions are not based on real facts; of course changing careers can be a stressful situation, and take the decision to leave a relationship which we depend on emotionally or economically can be nerve-racking, but these are just reason to come up with a better plan of action, and not to discourage taking action completely.
If we are stuck in an unfulfilling career and we are confronted by this every morning when we sit in our cubicle or office, but do nothing about it because we have a family that depend upon us, then we are paralyzed by fear and will be until we take the conscious choice to move and take action even in the presence of the situations that hold us back.
What our own personal Skynet fails to realize is that in many occasions the-harm-that-could-come is far lesser that the one we are enduring for our rejection to change.
Nothing Last Forever
But our brains are not dumb; we would not be here today if they were.
Sooner or later we will reject the present situation to a point where one of two things will happen: The excuses created by our minds to protect ourselves from danger will break and allow us to implement the changes we were longing, or the excuses will get bigger and stronger to the point where we will begin to hate the idea of change. The fantasy of a relationship will become a nightmare that we will finally disregards by any means necessary, usually far more destructive that the consequences that a change could have brought.
The point is not to pretend our actions will not have consequences because we know this would be a lie. The point is to acknowledge that no action is a choice and it also has consequences, even then it is to perpetuate the status quo.
Change can be difficult and many times it seems like a luxury we do not have, but the first step is to acknowledge the need for it and the wanting to find an alternative; from here on, the ways will show for ourselves one by one.
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