Open Your Heart, Pop Out of
Your Rut
Perhaps you've noticed that familiar inner patterns automatically kicks in as soon as you...
- Sense that you're being criticized
- Sense that your spouse is withdrawing from you
- Discover an opportunity to feast on lust
- Worry your partner is lusting after someone else
- Feel disrespected by your kids
- Feel left out by your friends
- Are disappointed in your own performance
- etc., etc., etc.
We cherish our human capacity for resourcefulness and innovation, but how creative do we really permit ourselves to be? So many of our inner responses follow these old tracks created more by our programming than our preferences, by our conditioning than our consciences.
Once we find ourselves in those inner ruts, the behavior patterns we manifest become quite predictable as well. We engage in some version of fight, flee, or freeze. We accuse. We blame. We criticize. We escape. We pull away. We put up a wall. We numb out. We bite our tongue. We pretend we aren't affected.
Our mental ruts have channelled us into behavioral ruts... which then push our loved ones and associates into self-defeating and self-perpetuating ruts of their own. Life becomes a continual round of Emotional Groud Hog Day. New, potentially fresh interactions--sometimes even with brand new people--but somehow they end up feeling eerily familiar. A new day!... but lived in the same old, same old way.
Here is an experiment to try out. It just takes a minute, but when it works the difference can be profound:
- Acknowledge a defensive/protective reaction has come up.
- Notice what you feel.
- Realize that reaction (or part of you) is trying to help.
- Move the reaction you're feeling to your heart.
- Reengage with the situation or interaction in a deliberately open-hearted way.
- Ask God to show you how to handle this reaction and use that reaction to draw you closer to God.
Do it two or three times a day when you feel the gravitational pull of outdated, unwanted emotional reactions.
This post is adapted from Dr. Mark Chamberlain. You can find his original post with comments here: http://markchamberlainphd.blogspot.com/2012/07/open-your-heart-pop-out-of-your-rut.html
BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.
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