If You Keep Doing What You’ve Always Been Doing, You’ll Keep Getting What You’ve Always Been Getting.

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 7: If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.

“There are three kinds of people; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”
-Nicholas Butler Murray

 Jump Start Changes, Jump Start Life

Often we try to control when changes come to us, so we can be ready and there will be no fear involved. We want our circumstances to be “just right”. We want change to come when we most expect it and then we’ll be prepared; we’ll be in control! Ha! Yeah right! Seriously, life rarely works that way. Some of us even avoid it at all costs and simply wait for life changes anxiously. Why start something so scary by choice, right? Well, if you’re sick of your circumstances, and tired of the way things are going currently, you CAN’T JUST WAIT.

How many times have you wished things would be different but then you did nothing about it? How many times have you said, “I hate this job” but continue to go to work every day never looking for a new job? Often, our reluctance for changing our circumstances is not due to not knowing what we really want to change, but rather, fearing that it wont work out the way we want it to, or that it will be too overwhelming. What if it’s worse? But let me ask you: What’s worse than being unhappy?

There is no such thing is the “Perfect” time. So stop waiting for the perfect time, or for the changes to come to you. You cannot wait for changes to “just happen” to you, and blindly close your eyes and hope you survive. You must take action! Break through you current barriers and start that avalanche of change on your own. Don’t wait for the right moment, or perfect timing. There will never be a time that will feel “Perfect”. You will always have some apprehensions. After all, you’re human. But don’t let that hold you back. You’ll do great! But you need to believe you’ll do great. You need to remember this: If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.

Hanging by a Thread

More often than not, you have to be at the end of your rope to be tempted to move through your fear and go for the unfamiliar, -the unknown; The place where your change awaits you. The problem with this is that you’re dangling, -you’re being held on by just a thread!! How scary? How risky?! You might fall!? Can you see now, how sitting in fear, may just increase your fear, and leave you in the most vulnerable, risky, FEARFUL place ever??! Yikes! (I hope you’re wearing a parachute).

So you see, you have two choices:

(1) Take action, make changes, go in the direction of your fears and fear not!

(2) Invest in a Life Parachute for those times you’re living extra risky and hanging by a thread (I’ll give you an inside tip now: that rescue parachute doesn’t exist. Sorry.)

And so, we come to it again…. If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting. Nothing has changed and nothing ever will. Same sh*t, different outfit. The style of your clothes may change, but the style of your circumstance wont.

It seems your only real option is choice number 1.  You must take action, make changes, go in the direction of your fears and fear not! Things will never change if you don’t make changes. If you want to be happier in your life, you need to change the things that make you unhappy. If you want to fulfill your dreams, you need to do things that bring you closer to doing so. If you want your circumstances to be better, you need to make choices to change your circumstances.

There will be bumps along the way, and times when you feel things are worse now, than ever. But not path to the life you really want will ever be strait and smooth. Don’t forget, it’s those bumps and places of darkness that produce the most growth. Use those periods to recall your strength and use it to catapult your forward. You CAN do it! And the time is NOW!

“I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.”

–Mae West

Reflection:

• Where do you want your life to take you?
• What do you want your life to look like in 1 year, 5 years, 20 years?
• What would need to change to create your great life?
• What aspects of your current circumstances do you enjoy and appreciate? What aspects could you do without?
• If you could only change one thing, what would it be?
• What do you risk by waiting for changes to come to you, rather than taking action yourself?

*Many of the ideas for the awakened heart project come from the book “How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness” by Karen Salmansohn

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