The Biggest Thing in Your Way (That You Don’t See) — Kara Payton

There is a side to creating a better life that is skimmed over. It is not as fun and inspiring and so we are repelled. We want the vision, bright & positive. We like the good news. Our hearts want to move toward what feels good.

It is a disservice to anyone seeking self-improvement not to address that if we want a better life, a happier & healthier self or a loving relationship-wanting it typically means we don’t have it.

If we don’t have it, there is a reason.

None of us want to address the reason.

It doesn’t feel good.

We just want to move on.

We want a change without looking at what got in the way, without dealing with why we want change.

Our precious hearts are so hopeful and pure, we think we can make lasting change with heart alone.

Your heart can lead you anywhere, yes. Your heart, however, is not designed to carry everything holding you back.

Our heart is doing so much for us. It is the inspiration. it calls us back out and up into place. It guides and soothes and heals. It gives us the still small “yes” and the still small “no.” It paces us, redirects, and points out lessons in the retrospection. It even directs the steps.

But it cannot take the steps. It cannot clear the path. It cannot move the boulder, choose where the feet end up landing, determine or force us to go where we need to go. It will not take our journey from us.

It cannot sustain the journey if we are unwilling to do the work needed to clear the barriers, keep it healthy, and fix what is injuring it.

We cannot see our patterns and consider our acknowledgement with finality.

We likely spent years, if not decades, in some of these defaults.

The repetition that feels so instinctive to sabotage, doubt, push away feels that way because it is practiced. To create change, we have to be willing to undertake the practice of its opposite.

Change is not passive.

Change is not for the one seeking an easy path.

It is for the one seeking a worthy path.

That is fully committed to everything it will mean to repeat the new steps over and over, taking none of them for granted, until they have stepped there enough to create a footprint deep enough to replace the one that lead them in the opposite direction.

We know everything changes and so we assume we are not involved. The thing we are overlooking there is that change IS inevitable, everything changes. But if we do not get involved, the change will be defaulted, not chosen.

What are you willing to DO to choose it?

You will change when you’re willing to do anything to move yourself toward it.

When you have enough of what is, you will take notice and get uncomfortable.

When you are done living it, you will get determined and take action.

For starters, take every habit/pattern you run that gets you into trouble, causes you pain or traps you into a destructive cycle. What would the opposite look like? What would the exact mirror of this look like? Who would be running it? What would it feel like? Why would this be its opposite? How would it play out?

If you need a mind to bounce thoughts to or questions to ponder with another heart, mine is yours.

XX

Kara

Originally published at https://www.karapayton.com on December 13, 2021.