I can’t change that
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I can’t change that
I was talking to an employee about how amazing she had been that day, and how her work was excellent alongside her incredible ability to connect with people. This lady started being quite self-critical and denied everything I said and added to her list of ‘wrongs’ that she was overweight.
She then told me, “This is who I am and I can’t change it, I can’t be amazing, and I can’t lose weight – because this is who I am.” There was an absolute finality in the belief she couldn’t change anything about her life, and so much so I stopped talking. I ended our conversation by saying, “I don’t think that is true” and I left it at that because the force of her beliefs was like a brick wall.
If I reflect on my own life and what has happened to me, to say I can’t change anything would completely do away with and disable my own ability to change – and the changes I have made have been enormous. I had been a lifetime dieter but spent most of my life very overweight, I was miserable, I complained about everything and everyone, I was arrogant, I was angry, I was physically sick, I couldn’t get up off the toilet without help, my knees were giving way, my guts were in a mess. Yet, when I came across The Way of the Livingness and started applying its principles, my life started to change dramatically. I saw my health improve, my sense of wellbeing shifted on its axis, and I lost 44 kilos. I didn’t do this by going on a diet. I just started caring for myself enough to stop feeding my body things that were killing me, like dairy, sugar, and gluten, as well as addressing the negative and self-destructive thoughts. So, with all of this and all the changes I have seen in myself and in many others, to hold a view that “I can’t change” would negate everything I have experienced. It would completely stop any possibility that not only could I make my life better, but that I could grow and develop my awareness of myself and the world.
What was it that allowed me to see there was a possibility of change? I was offered the ground-breaking understanding that within me is an innately amazing, gorgeous, valuable being.
It can be hard to feel that when you have blinkers on – they are hard to see past – but what changed for me was learning the basics of self-care and I began to live in a way that step by step allowed me to see the amazing being within me. At the start it was only glimpses and sometimes I would not believe it, but I used the Universal Medicine modalities – the Gentle Breath Meditation® and Esoteric Yoga – and slowly I came to see that there is a truly gorgeous being inside me that was there all along.
So, with this process I know very, very well what the power of choice can do and that we all can change. To avoid understanding or knowing that choice is possible is a huge consciousness that restricts and tells us who we are. It is like having a pair of blinkers on all the time, and we are told, “you’re only this, you can’t be anything more, you can’t be amazing, don’t think that, if you think you’re amazing there will be consequences.” The blinkers are like a constant threat; if you try and change, the consciousness says, “stay like everyone else – this is who you are, do not dare change.”
The belief we can’t change is very loaded with restrictions that seem to come from every direction and can come in the form of negative self-talk, which if we look deeper can sometimes have its origins in what we were told as children, and negative experiences we have in life.
Once you start making a move to change and connect with that amazingness within you can make that the focus, rather than the prison of your thoughts and negative experiences. It is this new focus that can put you in the driver’s seat of your life.
What are the consequences of changing and connecting to our innate amazingness within? We get to let go the old way of seeing things that has a very defined flavour… it’s like eating a very old and familiar ‘cake.’ We think this ‘cake’ makes us feel good, and it may feel good for five minutes, but we are right back wanting more of what is old and familiar over what we can sense is true. When we decide to leave the ‘cake’ alone because we know it doesn’t satisfy us at all and we begin to look inside for the amazing being we really are, it can feel a bit uncomfortable, as we are not used to looking within us and being okay with what that feels like. But the familiarity of the ‘cake’ has nothing to offer us compared to feeling the gorgeousness we are within.
We get to step away, to put those blinkers down, and start to see what life actually is. We also get to feel the gorgeousness of who we are inside, to feel the tenderness and delicacy of our movements unhampered by the crushing we feel when we have to fit in with life, we get to feel our own beauty coming from the inside, and can feel the incredible nature of everyone else as well.
If we hang onto the view that we can’t change, what exactly are we protecting?
It’s the familiarity of the old way of being that is like an old ‘cake’ that gets us, even though it denies who we truly are, and we end up protecting and defending the flavour of our ‘cake’ over the awareness of our innate gorgeousness. When we decide ‘I can’t change that’, we are choosing to go along with the familiar taste and feel of that old ‘cake’ and a way of life that discounts and dismisses ourselves. This choice ultimately overwhelms and suppresses who we are, instead of supporting, complementing and accelerating a full and rich way of life. There appears to be a devious game being played, which is specifically designed to interfere with our own natural, innate way of life. In short, we have accepted it because it is a familiar and an old way of living immeasurably less than who we truly are.
This is what we sign up to when we say, “I can’t change”. So, it is for us to decide whether we want to live a life behind blinkers or choose a very real alternative – to connect to, and bring out, who we really are.
Returning to your essence
Getting to know your essence is about understanding your breath. When you choose to breathe the yumminess of your own breath you can begin to feel and live full of yourself without needing anything else.
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