Rewiring Series Pt 3: Doing the work solo (is there a point?)

Now, I wanna start off, first of all, by sharing with you a story about a friend of mine who's going through a separation.

Absolutely stunning woman, someone who would stop anyone in the street when they're walking past, and the reason why her relationship is ending at the moment, those reasons are really sound.

She's not made this decision lightly, and the next season of her life is focused solely on the children, making sure that the co-parenting dynamic can be set up really healthily, but also, in the future, making sure that this cycle never repeats.

Now, she's done the work, she's done the s- counseling, she's really focused on making sure that every decision she has made has been the-- for the benefit of everyone, but she does have this bubbling awareness starting to come up of, "Okay, how do I make sure that I don't end up in this situation or accidentally choose the same person again?" She is at the new stages of this kind of awareness.

Her focus on what she was going to do, whether she was going to stay or whether she was going to go, all of that has been focused on very practical reasons up until now.

But it was interesting recently, we were having a conversation about something that continues to bother her and has bothered her her entire life.

As stunning as she is, there are some unique characteristics about her features that can be show-stopping, I think in the best of ways.

Let's just say she has very unique hair, and it's stunning, and it's beautiful, and it often gets complimented on.

There are times, however, where she feels that those comments veer from compliments into statements, judgments, pointing out that there's a difference there that shouldn't be pointed out, and it is something that bothers her, that sometimes she has awareness that it either shouldn't bother her as much as it does, or she finds herself in a situation where even if she knows that the comment is innocent, she feels torn between correcting and educating the person around the right things to say versus letting it go, focusing on relationship building, brushing it off, perhaps e- at the expense, though, of her own protection and her own nurturing of healthy sensitivity.

What started there was a little bit of a deep dive into why this has been such a concern or challenge or sensitivity for her entire life.

Even though she is so successful in so many other areas of her life, this one component of her sense of confidence continues to be shaken, whether she wishes it to be or not.

This may sound like something innocent, but when you track that pattern backwards, when you take into account how successful she is, how long she stayed in a relationship that wasn't serving her, her own background, her own attachment style, and other smaller quirks and triggers that can affect her life, even though there's a part of her wishing that it didn't, but also feeling torn about the fact that she should stand up for herself, it should be something that other people should know or be aware of if they are around her.

When you track all these minor and major life events, what is built is a pattern that weaves a thread through all of her decisions, her relationships, and the views that she holds about herself.

And as a pattern expert, finally being [chuckles] given free rein to allow her to have a look at some of this pattern tracking has been a really unique experience for her because it can be very jarring to see that although many of the challenges that she's faced and the faults and the flaws of her partner, she can comfortably say were not her responsibility, not on her shoulders, and not something that she needs to take accountability for.

There is a common thread there that she can track back to her childhood that provides color around so many different events in her life, right through to even how she takes compliments about her hair, or comments, however you perceive that.

That tracks back to a simple, repeatable pattern, a patternThat is continuing despite ending one relationship for all the right reasons, has the potential to create the same pattern elsewhere, whether she wishes it to or not.

Even if she has the highest level of discernment, even if she expects and surrenders to the fact that there are so many things outside of her control, it is so valuable to remember and to identify the fact that if we can find out where our patterns are and rewire them, we don't have to work so hard to have hypervigilance and micro level awareness around other people's faults and flaws, because we have a deep sense of trust in our own intuition and our own decision-making capabilities, whether that's choosing a partner, ending a relationship, or bringing up a conversation about the dishes late at night in a way that allows you to get your needs met.