cold, hard truth
It’s a crazy moment when you realize your own patterns. It’s easy to be blind to the unhealthy behavior we all engage in. But once you become aware of it, it’s much easier to understand why our lives are not the way we want them to be. Cognitive dissonance is when your values and your actions do not align. This means you either have to change one of those things. Sometimes its easier to just change your values. It’s easy to lose your values in the face of change and external influence. It’s a difficult thing to stop and realize one day that you have become someone you don’t like. Being able to recognize your old patterns and realizing when you fall back into them is critical to ending the cycle. It’s hard to trace the exact moment when you fell down the rabbit hole but that’s the thing, it took more than just a moment to become someone you can’t recognize.
The shame that comes along with the feelings of regret are the hardest to deal with. But, these are the strongest push factors away from the person you used to be. It’s scary realizing some of your problems were created by none other than yourself. But once you become aware of your faults, you can’t unknow them. You just tend to choose to ignore them. It’s the awful feeling you have when you are reminded of something you wish you never did, that motivates you to change. As much as those feelings hurt and typically keep you up at night, the painful lessons they bring are essential to your growth.
Mistakes are necessary unless you keep making them too many times. Then they just become toxic behavior. It’s crazy how life will let you get by until the point at which you can no longer try to get away with it anymore. You hit a breaking point. You’re faced with the cold, hard truth and it’s urgent. Hello, this is reality calling and I cannot leave a message, we gotta talk ASAP. The good thing about making mistakes and being given a second (or third or fourth or fifth!) chance, is that you have a choice. You have a choice to keep doing what you’re comfortable with and keep being embarrassed and in denial. Or you can be uncomfortable and choose to change so you can be proud of who you are. Do the hard thing and love it.
