Do you ever find that you are having the same arguments with your partner year after year? The circumstances may potentially be different but it’s the same fundamental premise. Or the same gripe with your kids or relatives. Are you always late, are you always busy? Are you always cranky?
There is a reason why they made the movie “groundhog day”. Because sometimes it feels like your life is on loop. So what do we do? We kick that can down the road and say when my kids are older I’ll have more time. When my partner does ‘X’ everything will be fine. Or we book a holiday! We look at the outside world and think if we can just change our circumstances we can change our life.
So I have this long-standing irritation with my daughter and her breakfast requirements. She is ridiculously fussy about her toast. Let’s just say breakfast in general. There are very few things she will eat and so toast is the regular go-to. HOWEVER, it must be cooked to her precise standards. Too little cooking and it’s soggy, too much and it’s dry and any burnt bits are a big fat no. It must be golden brown, evenly cooked and if there is the slightest deviation it’s rejected. Arggggghhh.
We definitely have groundhog breakfast in our house. So of course I have to start thinking; quantum physics confirms that we create our own reality. Something many yogis and gurus have known longer than that. So if I believe I create my own reality then I am responsible for my toast hell.
Which really isn’t such a stretch, think about how you feel when something bad happens and then your whole day follows that pattern. Or you look around at every man-made thing and realise that it all started as a thought in someone’s mind. Our thoughts, become things. Our thoughts are creating the pictures of our life day in and day out.
If I keep thinking it’s a problem with her and keep looking outside myself for the solution, I’ve got it backwards. If we all keep looking outside ourselves to change the pictures of our life isn’t that like watching re-runs and expecting to get a different ending? That new phone or car or job or house or holiday isn’t going to make us happy not in the long term, because we haven’t looked within to the source of the problem. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it, so it’s only a problem because we see it that way. If it’s all created by thought in our mind, if we don’t change our thinking, we can’t change our experiences. So we get groundhog day for real. Our past becomes our future and we are stuck watching reruns wondering why we never get what we want.
As they say if nothing changes nothing changes.
So I ask myself a few questions. How is the toast situation a problem? Because it causes delays either during breakfast or she says she’s hungry as we are leaving because the rejected toast is still on her plate and I’m scrambling for something to appease her so she’s fed before school. How is that a problem? Because she isn’t responsible for her own needs and it causes me grief at a busy time. How is that a problem? Because I feel like I’ve failed her…. And there it is. If I believe I am failing her as a mother I’m going to keep seeing more ways that I am failing her because that is my lens. I’m going to keep perpetuating the same story with my thoughts. What you focus on, you notice and attract, and the cycle continues. There is your groundhog life in a nutshell!
I let go of that belief using my master NLP skills and my toast nightmare disappeared!
Who knew toast could run so deep, I challenge you to look within.
Much Love Skye
Photo by Manki Kim on Unsplash (and by the way that toast would totally be rejected- soggy potential at the base. The hole would also be frowned upon- but could go either way)