By Carmen Honacker
Today, one of my co-workers jokingly asked me why she keeps attracting emotionally unavailable men. We can keep going on this list and replace “emotionally unavailable” with words like “addicted,” “cheaters,” “liars,” or whatever else is unacceptable to us and works against the life we wish to have.
So how does it work that, even though we vow to never end up in that situation again, we go out and attract nothing but the things we don’t want? How do we seem to know with absolute certainty what isn’t good for us and yet, like a moth to the light, we keep choosing it?
First of all, there is no such thing as “bad luck” or “born under the wrong star.” Life and the way it pans out for us, is a sum of our choices, actions, words, thoughts and emotions. And what most people are not aware of is that choices are largely made from the subconscious, not the conscious part of our brain. And just like the hard-drive of a computer, we are hard-wired to respond to certain stimuli in a certain fashion.
When we learn to cope and deal with unsatisfactory, abusive or wrong behavior, we then tend to choose it. The reason is simple—no matter how miserable we are, we know how to do “bad”; we know how to deal with misery and unhappiness, because we may have never learned how to do happy. We cannot live or attract what we cannot envision! This is because we cannot know what we don’t know (yeah, it’s a mouthful!).
We are conditioned to recognize that which is familiar; good or bad. And by design we gravitate towards it. The more we do repeat a certain cycle, the more we become addicted to it. Repeating patterns forms neurological pathways and literally hard-wires us to rinse and repeat. The less we do a behavior, the less we will have the neurological pathways to know or remember how to do it; i.e. we literally unlearn how to be happy and we keep enforcing our subconscious dialogue, which may consist of phrases like “I’m not good enough,” or “I don’t ever get what I want.”
The worst part about it all is that most people are completely unaware that they are the creator of their misery. A lot of it is due to denial, but the other part is due to the fact that they are making their choices literally unconsciously; and again, how can you be aware of something you don’t know is there? And why do some people break the cycle—and how can you break the cycle?
What helped me was logic, at least until I got the ball rolling. I did simple math. If I am now on my tenth relationship, let’s say, with the tenth guy who is emotionally unavailable, dishonest and actually quite dysfunctional, there has to be something wrong with me! The mathematical possibility that out of 100 people I meet, 95 of them are tools is pretty low, unless I’m the one who keeps drawing them somehow.
Changing a faulty hard-drive isn’t the hardest thing, even though it isn’t easy at all. The hardest thing is finding the courage and honesty with oneself to stop pointing the finger at others—no matter how much you have been wronged—and pointing it at yourself instead. Initially, it’s a very scary thing to realize that you’re responsible for your well-being and that you’re the master of your own universe. After all, we all have been taught to blame—be it a god, our parents, another person or race, and so on. It therefore goes against every part of our being to stop the cycle and take full responsibility for our choices. It’s also a pretty somber awakening.
Most people will never find the courage to drop their stories of victimhood and take full charge. However, for those who are interested I can report that there is not only light at the end of the tunnel, but absolute bliss. If I would have known what awaits me on the other side, trust me, I would have started earlier.
The path to become a creator versus a simple bystander is steep, thorny and requires a lot of will-power and support. But just like most things in life that are hard work the rewards far outweigh the trials.
So how does it work that, even though we vow to never end up in that situation again, we go out and attract nothing but the things we don’t want? How do we seem to know with absolute certainty what isn’t good for us and yet, like a moth to the light, we keep choosing it?
First of all, there is no such thing as “bad luck” or “born under the wrong star.” Life and the way it pans out for us, is a sum of our choices, actions, words, thoughts and emotions. And what most people are not aware of is that choices are largely made from the subconscious, not the conscious part of our brain. And just like the hard-drive of a computer, we are hard-wired to respond to certain stimuli in a certain fashion.
When we learn to cope and deal with unsatisfactory, abusive or wrong behavior, we then tend to choose it. The reason is simple—no matter how miserable we are, we know how to do “bad”; we know how to deal with misery and unhappiness, because we may have never learned how to do happy. We cannot live or attract what we cannot envision! This is because we cannot know what we don’t know (yeah, it’s a mouthful!).
We are conditioned to recognize that which is familiar; good or bad. And by design we gravitate towards it. The more we do repeat a certain cycle, the more we become addicted to it. Repeating patterns forms neurological pathways and literally hard-wires us to rinse and repeat. The less we do a behavior, the less we will have the neurological pathways to know or remember how to do it; i.e. we literally unlearn how to be happy and we keep enforcing our subconscious dialogue, which may consist of phrases like “I’m not good enough,” or “I don’t ever get what I want.”
The worst part about it all is that most people are completely unaware that they are the creator of their misery. A lot of it is due to denial, but the other part is due to the fact that they are making their choices literally unconsciously; and again, how can you be aware of something you don’t know is there? And why do some people break the cycle—and how can you break the cycle?
What helped me was logic, at least until I got the ball rolling. I did simple math. If I am now on my tenth relationship, let’s say, with the tenth guy who is emotionally unavailable, dishonest and actually quite dysfunctional, there has to be something wrong with me! The mathematical possibility that out of 100 people I meet, 95 of them are tools is pretty low, unless I’m the one who keeps drawing them somehow.
Changing a faulty hard-drive isn’t the hardest thing, even though it isn’t easy at all. The hardest thing is finding the courage and honesty with oneself to stop pointing the finger at others—no matter how much you have been wronged—and pointing it at yourself instead. Initially, it’s a very scary thing to realize that you’re responsible for your well-being and that you’re the master of your own universe. After all, we all have been taught to blame—be it a god, our parents, another person or race, and so on. It therefore goes against every part of our being to stop the cycle and take full responsibility for our choices. It’s also a pretty somber awakening.
Most people will never find the courage to drop their stories of victimhood and take full charge. However, for those who are interested I can report that there is not only light at the end of the tunnel, but absolute bliss. If I would have known what awaits me on the other side, trust me, I would have started earlier.
The path to become a creator versus a simple bystander is steep, thorny and requires a lot of will-power and support. But just like most things in life that are hard work the rewards far outweigh the trials.
No comments:
Post a Comment