Picking Up Blueberries

An addiction is when you continue to let things damage you even though you know the destructive nature of what you are doing…Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  Insane behavior supports an addiction or addictive behavior because it helps you tell yourself that things will turn out differently this time, it helps you mask the obvious and live in the hope that ‘this’ is different than the time before.  Insane behavior is just that– INSANE.  If you are stuck in a pattern or a circumstance that isn’t changing, as long as you STAY STUCK THERE it WILL NOT CHANGE.  You will see the same wheel turn round and round and you will keep telling yourself that the result will be different….it won’t.

In order to change the turn of the wheel we need to change ourselves and our circumstances.  In the spirit of telling one on myself and with the wish to help anyone else that might be stuck, I will share with you that I am in the middle of a deep inquiry about where I am stuck and how I can alter that.  My insanity seems to be that I choose unavailable people to discuss relationship possibility with…they are either unavailable emotionally or circumstantially, this has, I’m afraid, been going on for years now…this choosing of things that are destructive to me.  The cost has been great as it has kept me in a constant state of reactivity, pinging from one emotion to the next.  Recently, I have been granted the Grace to see that this behavior is an addiction in every sense of the word and I have the power to alter it at any moment.

We lose hope when we feel like we have lost our power to enact change, the truth is we never lose our power to enact change…the Light of our nature is always lying there waiting to be called upon…if we give power to the Light we can enact whatever changes we wish.  Consequently, if we give power to the darker sides of our nature we will continue down the road of insane behavior.  There is never a convenient time to push ourselves to give up a behavior that no longer serves us; these behaviors wear all kinds of names: drug addiction, alcohol addiction, food addictions, being overweight, staying in relationships that have long been over, guilt, gambling, sex addictions, over-spending, involving ourselves in relationships with unavailable people, etc etc.  Whatever costume your behavior wears it is stealing your personal power and it has you in such a state of reactivity that you cannot even see your REAL life because all you are doing is running on the insanity wheel.

Some of us are running so fast inside that wheel that we actually think we are making progress…REALITY CHECK– you only make progress when you get OUTSIDE the wheel and realize that you have been running in it, at this point you get to choose a different course.  A fish that lives in a fishbowl has no idea that he lives in there as all he knows is the limited conditions of the bowl.  A human being stuck in a behavior shares the same limited understanding of their life, they think what they are living in is all there is…

Enacting change starts with recognizing that we have something that needs to be changed, the 12 step programs call it admitting that we have a problem and that works too.  Use whatever method or program you need to use to recognize the behavior that doesn’t work.  The important thing is to recognize it because of course you cannot change something that you cannot even SEE.

Making major behavioral shifts is like picking up blueberries that have fallen on the floor.  If you have ever dropped a container of blueberries on the floor you will fully understand this comparison.

When you drop a container of blueberries they roll EVERYWHERE…first you swear and become angry that you were stupid enough to drop the container in the first place and then you quickly resolve yourself to the fact that you have to pick them up.  You can’t pick them up in handfuls because you will crush them, so you have to pick them up one by one and as you do that some of them roll away under things and you have to peer under there and roll them out.  The blueberries also NEVER fit back into the container the way that they were before you dropped them, so you have to artfully maneuver them back into the container to try and get it to close again.  When you are picking up the blueberries they sometimes fall out of your hands again and you end up grabbing the same blueberry several times…all in all, a tedious process that causes one to gasp in horror when a container is dropped…

A shift in behavior is like this as it is one small change at a time and sometimes you drop another blueberry and you have to pick it up again and again.  You can’t scoop all the blueberries back into the container at once or you will crush them, you can’t change a behavior in a day or it won’t stick.  REAL change, REAL behavioral shifts come over time, in stages, one blueberry at a time and eventually you have them all and you can reclose the container.  Eventually your small changes become a big shift and one day along the way you wake up and realize that you are free from your insanity and that you have clarity you never had before.

Important to remember that when you drop a blueberry in the ‘picking up’ process all is not lost, just reach down and pick it up again.  When you are making changes and you go back and repeat a behavior that doesn’t work, it’s okay…just remember that you are shifting and next time make a different choice…change can be embodied one blueberry at a time…

xo,

n