Unpattern Patterns
In 2014 at Rise Up! we discovered, re-invented, and committed ourselves to transformative LIFE PURPOSE. We ended the year needing assistance, reminders, and tools to successfully meet the challenge of transformation. Life Purpose is THEE job of our lifetime and deserves support to realize itself!
In 2015 we’re engaging Ten Principles for Being Human: How to Turn Every Experience into Opportunity. No matter the roller coaster of success, joy, real and supposed tragedies, we learn methods to “Be Fully Human,” and stay on our Life Purpose course. The Principles help us embrace life as it is. We find something brave, beautiful, positive and successful in every stomach drop, twist and squeal of life. We learn to turn “Every Day Experience” into an “Opportunity.”
In August we chose to Face Fear and Embrace Freedom. Stay and we transform our relation to fear in order to transform our lives.
In September the Face Fear lesson becomes the exact tool required to step outside of our conscious minds and unwind feedback loops that reinforce the past. We examine our minds and repetitive behaviors and Unpattern the Patterns that limit us.
UNCHALLENGED patterns decide the future without our knowing they imprison us! Unravel, UN-pattern a pattern and create new powerful ways of being fully ourselves. The energy to live our Life Purpose becomes possible in Every Experience.
Featured Journal Entry:
Tami has taken the Rise Up! challenges to heart since she first found our work. “I was a bedraggled mess of an artist when I first came to Rise Up! ‘Natural talent,’ but constant barriers, ‘real or imagined,’ allowed everyone else’s definitions of Art and my artistry to override projects I wanted to pursue. The 2014 Life Purpose journey was a magical intervention that focused me in a new direction and inspired action. I needed our 2015 Principles to make my promise to myself real.”
Stay, breathe in calm and develop a silent space that reveals the truth of life as waves of Gain and Loss. Riding the possibility wave we let go of falsehood of control and become present to the entire possibility of each moment. Question the Definition of Ourselves and we re-create our own identities. Mindfulness Ninjas stay awake and aware each moment and learn, humbly, with gratitude and generosity, to Take Full Credit. Facing Fear awakens courage to go deeper within our brain’s systemic feedback loops, question their truthfulness and authority and Unpattern Patterns that don’t serve the life we are creating.
Tami, “First shock, that’s what it was, seeing how easily I slipped into obeying feedback loops embedded in my brain and behaviors, limiting Life Purpose; staggering! I felt like a slave to demands and commands I couldn’t recall even learning. But as we worked I saw the intricate weaving, the artistic tapestry, of repeated patterns. Depression was both my greatest fear and what I clung to as an excuse not to fully live my art. Depression is so smart! It uses my past trauma, sad events and even disappointments to keep me in place whenever I try to risk defeat or rejection or reach for major success! Unraveling embedded feedback loops was so confrontational. Whispered, ‘you’ll fail; stay within boundaries you know; don’t rock the boat; don’t innovate.’ But once I chose to see Un-Patterning as a great adventure into ‘mystery-of-self-discovery’ I uncovered clues to my unconscious. Unpatterning was empowering instead of frightening!”
Patterns are embedded in our SAFETY-seeking, certainty-needy brains in numbers of ways. Family systems, definitions and identities given or inherited from cultural norms and even through our DNA, can set up repeated messages of feedback loops. We don’t challenge messages that are shared by the people we know, love, respect, and make up our systems of safety. We believe they are ‘REAL,’ beyond reproach! Unconsciously we believe they are true because they have been with us for so long!
Patterns are also embedded when four common experiences converge:
An event occurs which may or may not be serious but confronts us when we are very young and before we have the verbal skills to deal with our feelings. (i.e. a dog barks in our faces at the park and we are startled!)
There’s emotional reaction from adults who, in their concern, validate and even inflame our fear. (i.e. “oh my poor baby, horrible, terrible, be afraid of bad dogs” as we get rushed home etc.) Often children are frightened by someone else’s fear. The adult emotional response starts feeding us messages that soon become our personal PTSD moment.
Feedback loops speak back unconscious fear/safety messages in whispers that occur every time we see a dog or go back to the park.
The unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and fiction so a feedback loop in the unconscious tells the conscious mind that it’s real.
“Once I heard the repetition of fears (and that took work!) I recognized patterns that spoke to me since I was a small girl. My female role models were afraid of even leaving the house let alone challenging the wide world of Art! They were scared and they were well meaning. But their repeated and reinforced sadness and fear messages had to be extricated from my own brain! Talk about an artist’s epiphany! Immediately, from nowhere, I heard another part of my brain answer: ‘I have changed so much, I can be fearless facing depression too; I can Unpattern this too!’ It was the first time I heard and refused patterns, learned in the ugly past, determine my beautiful future. Fear does rise again and sadness does creep into my brain but I literally turn to it now and say, ‘you are an old pattern I INHERITED, and I refuse to take you along on my joy-ride!’ Taking apart old patterns is a heroine’s journey! It takes insight, inspiration and courage. I have Mindfulness tools now that allow me to hear and see what I couldn’t before. Fearless, I Unpattern the Patterns and ask what I couldn’t when I was a kid: ‘Is this TRUE?’”
Concretized patterns encourage behaviors designed to keep us in familiar, if limiting, or even blinding, systems. False identities and fear depend on feedback loops of old patterns. IF we choose to “Be Fully Human; to find Opportunity in Every Experience” then we task ourselves to Stay, Be Mindful, and Listen to the chatter of our brains that speak back to us with limits and fears to keep us in place!
Tami encourages us to “stand back from our own intricate tapestry; look at it as a piece of art that you no longer want hanging on your wall. Start with just one thread and keep pulling, unwinding and watch the picture of yourself change before your eyes. Your heart will release a big sigh, tears may follow, and you will be FULLY ALIVE AND WHOLLY human!”
Featured Exercise:
Start with our usual three deep inhales/exhales, releasing any restriction of old fears.
Re-Defining ourselves was our Third Principle for Being Human. New and self-created Identities require new brain messages, ones that support growth and transformation. Un-pattern patterns set in the past by using your own powerful repeating messages. Create your own Mantra!
Transforming ourselves in order to find Opportunity in Every Experience and Be Fully Human, requires us to create and then PRACTICE these new messages. It took time for our brains to believe fearful, limiting feedback loops. It WILL take time to unravel the past. Make yourself a priority!
For more helpful techniques on Unpatterning the Patterns, stay tuned for next week’s Featured Exercise email!