Friday, February 11, 2022

Does history really repeat itself or we choose to repeat it?

I went to a friend's house and she has a son who is 4 years old. When I greeted her and went into her house, she introduced her son to me and told the son "Say Hi to aunty", and the child did not say. Instead he looked distracted. She again told him to say hi to me. He didn't want to. She was almost getting irritated and I had to tell her, its ok for him to not say hi to me. Let him feel free to be himself.

As children we were taught many rules of the society and that of the family. They could be rules like ‘you must respect adults’ or ‘don’t back answer’ or ‘you should be nice to people’ or ‘parents know what is good for you, so listen to them’, or ‘be strong and don’t cry’ or ‘don’t take your problems outside the four walls’, bla bla bla…….. 


And when you got scolded for making a mistake (so natural), you were told ‘silly people make mistakes’ and so you decided ‘I am not good or smart enough’ or ‘I am silly or stupid’. If your sibling came along and you felt your parents gave more love and care to them and so, you assumed, ‘I’m not loved or appreciated enough’, when you went to school and teacher did not smile at you but smiled at your friend, you said ‘people are unfair’ and so you either decided ‘I need to fight to survive’ or ‘I don’t deserve love’. When your parents gave you less money than you wanted, you would have been disappointed and said to yourself, ‘there is never enough money’, or ‘when I grow up, I’ll earn lots of money’, etc, etc, etc…..


If your parents gave you everything you wanted, sometimes even before you asked, you felt obliged to make them happy by studying well but somehow you forgot what you studied, and so got less marks, you felt guilty and assumed ‘my parents are doing so much for me, but I can’t make them happy and so I’m a let-down’ or ‘life always lets me down’. 

 

And ultimate is in the 6th grade, when your friend shared your secret with another classmate or got another bestest friend, you got sad or angry and declared that ‘nobody can be trusted’ and you still believe it because more people did this to you. 

 

So, whether you didn’t get what you wanted or you got everything you wanted, you still made certain decisions at that time which may have helped you move away from threat or negativity. You did not know any other way to handle it. But now, you know many more ways to resolve your issues, isn’t it? Then, why do you still have to believe or hold on to this decision you made long long time back? It is because the past decisions have stored in your brain and body and makes you believe as if that is “reality”. And since you have hundreds of evidences of that being true (still it is happening), you get gripped by the thought as not a thought but as “reality”. And so even now, the same things are happening around you. It’s as if you got addicted to those thoughts and beliefs and so you don’t want to lose them. Without awareness, you are allowing your future also to be like the past. Means, your past keeps repeating in your life and you live in a vicious circle. 

 

If you want to break the vicious circle, alter your circumstances and change your life patterns, you first need to shift your view about reality. What you think is reality, is often your beliefs playing out around you. It's the programmed neuron firing in your brain for the stimulus outside. That's when we react, to survive the threat since the neuron is programmed for that. Yes, you are that powerful to cause your thoughts into reality. All you have to do is choose the thoughts that you want to turn into reality. So lets choose.... 


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3 comments:

  1. Good observation, we need to be conscious about this pattern in every situation of life.

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  2. An eye opener write up Padma! Yes many times we believe our views about life are reality! Loved it

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  3. A very good article, Padma. Some of us might be knowing this but still many of us will not be mindful enough to practice the same.

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