How Patterns relate to Change, or why I have a love-hate relationship with plaid!

So what’s the deal?  Why this intense focus on patterns bordering on obsessive compulsive disorder? (okay, I’ve crossed the border into Crazy Town, but it’s only because I’m fanatical about changing your life)

Have you ever noticed that when you try to change something, anything in your life, that you have to work really hard to hold onto that change.

As you attempt to modify one part of your life, everything else seems to come unglued, unhinged, and generally sucky.  Your life starts to exert a fierce resistance to whatever you want to change.  The more you force it, the more resistance you feel.  It’s almost as if your life was exerting energy to return you to your previous negative state. (the state where I, for example, used to eat a box of cookies before dinner every night)

You have to push and push and push for even a small change. Applying a counter resistance until you either give up, or the stars align, the angels sing, and you finally topple with exhaustion into a new routine that mostly, kind of, sort of, supports your dreams and goals.  Of course, to really reach a blazing success, you have to keep stoking and blowing on the fire. (and probably get a little light headed from all the damn huffing and puffing)

A big problem with this method is that you expend a huge amount of energy to constantly fight with your old patterns or habits. You have to build up momentum with laser like focus day after day after day.

It’s just like trying to make a plaid background by randomly drawing lines with crayons. You have to put layer on top of layer on top of layer.  It’s really messy.  It leaves lots of crayon crumbs all over the place. Your crayons end up being these little stumpy things that are extremely hard to hold on to, or do much else with besides eat them. (if you are still a 3 year old, that is) And the result is something very scary looking or very brown looking, but rarely a stunning example of Plaid.

To make things worse, if you don’t make it over the HUGE hurdle, then you end up back where you started. Only now, you are completely drained of vital energy, depressed by your lack of progress, and have little to no interest in changing anything else, ever again. Plus it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R. (ie, You throw away the nasty un-plaid picture and your devastated box of crayons, and vow to never again attempt plaid pictures or even pictures with a row of stripes. Ugh!)

Now, don’t get me wrong, if this process has worked for you in the past and left you feeling empowered to charge forward, then I salute you. (no kidding, you completely totally rock and probably have the most awesome plaid pictures ever!) However, for the rest of us, lets look at an alternative.

What if, instead of using a sustained flow of high energy over months and months, you gave a short burst of intense action up front.

That means you DON’T change your pattern gradually.  Nope. Instead, you just suddenly throw it off the back of the bus. You disrupt the pattern completely in a very short time frame.

This alternative requires some chaotic energy to start.  And you might feel a bit unbalanced until a new pattern re-asserts itself.  But, once you stop the energy of the old negative pattern, you have carte blanch to easily and quickly create a new pattern. A pattern that will match your dreams.  A pattern that you can harness to reach your goals.

But… (yes, Virginia there is a Secret Clause) what happens if you disrupt the old pattern but don’t replace it with a new pattern that can balance all the energies of your life?

Then all those leftover, ghostly negative thoughts, feelings, and general bad vibrations will reassert themselves.  This will actually feed your unwanted tendencies, strengthen the energy of the negative pattern, and stop all progress toward your passionate goals. (Yikes, Bad News!)

There is light at the end of this tunnel though. (Because plaid can be original, fun, and beautiful) Because you are going to take the time to observe your current patterns.

You’re going to decide exactly what you WANT to change and what you are READY to change.

Then you’re going to prepare a new pattern that takes into account the areas of your life that you choose to change AND the areas of your life that will stabilize you during the transition. You are going to plan out your plaid background with a ruler, a pencil, an eraser, and a knowledge of both straight lines and the power of overlapping boxes.  (aaahhh, the light is starting to peek through!)

Yes, it will still take some energy and commitment before you can make the change.  But once you hit the green light, the energy of your new pattern will work for the change you want instead of against it. Your plaid won’t be perfect, but it’ll look a hell of a lot better than that previous mishmash and it’ll have far less uninteresting gooey brown.

So, welcome to ‘This Is Your Life’! (or This is the CHANGE of Your Life) Start picking your vantage point, ladies and gentleman because it’s going to be an awesome show.

PS – The lovely crayon photo above came from Matthew Clark Photography and Design on Flickr.