Awareness precedes Change.

That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look. -Carl Jung.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.’ To make the needed change in any area of one’s life, one must first become aware that change is necessary. What got you here to where you are will not get you where you want to be. We all set goals or wishes at the beginning of the year, but most of us will not follow through due to many factors.

Domestication of our Capacity ¹

When an elephant was very young and weighed only several hundred pounds, it was restricted by having a chain clasped to its leg and connected to a tree or deep stake. When the animal tried to move away and learned that it could not break the chain, it limited itself. It believed that whatever restriction was put on it—even a rope it could have easily broken—was more powerful than it was.

People are like those elephants. We often believe that some of the restrictions we may have experienced earlier in life are permanent. Or we’ve been told we have limitations that we actually don’t possess, and these things are keeping us from taking the journey in life that we long for. These are the chains we need to break.

“Awareness changes everything. As soon as we become aware that some of our “limitations” are artificial limitations, we can begin to overcome many of them. We can blow off these caps, which opens the way for growth.”

The most basic impetus for change is pain ². From the time we are first able to make choices as a child, we instinctively avoid pain. But a better response to pain is to change so we are no longer hurt by it. When you believe there’s nothing you can do about a problem, it’s disheartening and demotivating. But when you begin to learn how you can take steps to start making a difference, it will propel you to take action.

People Change When They Hurt Enough That They Have To, People Change When They See Enough That They Are Inspired To, People Change When They Learn Enough That They Want To, People Change When They Receive Enough That They Are Able To

In Success is a Choice ³, John Maxwell advised: Here’s what to look for and how to focus your energy to get the kinds of changes that will change you for the better:

Don’t change just enough to get away from your problems—change enough to solve them.
Don’t change your circumstances to improve your life—change yourself to improve your circumstances.
Don’t do the same old things expecting to get different results—get different results by doing something new.
Don’t wait to see the light to change—start changing as soon as you feel the heat.
Don’t see change as something hurtful that must be done—see it as something helpful that can be done.
Don’t avoid paying the immediate price of change—if you do, you will pay the ultimate price of never improving.

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – SAIN

Our instinct is to turn away from strong emotions or to try to shut them down. Instead allow whatever is moving through the body to fully arise. With every emotion we feel, it will eventually soften and pass away. All emotion is temporary, it swells and subsides, they come and go. It is often not easy to deal with strong emotions but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

In French, the word “SAIN” means healthy or wholesome. The meditation teacher Micheal stone uses it as an acronym to work with difficult emotions. S stans for Stop, A for Allow, I for investigate and N for Non-Identification. So when we are struck with a surge of anger, the first step is to stop and acknowledge that anger is present. The next step is to allow for it, instead of pushing it away; create space for the anger. Next, investigate how it shows up physically, where it is in our body. And finally, we do our best not to identify with it.

Like an outside observer, we watch the anger without becoming it. It is not easy to face strong emotions. Be patient with yourself.

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