Do you find yourself reliving the same patterns disguised in new chapters of your life? It could be falling into the same kind of unsatisfactory relationship with friends or significant others -except with different people, or giving in to the same trends of procrastination in a new setting. Now is the time to start recognizing the situations you don’t like that are recycling themselves into new life experiences. When it comes to the art of being Zen, the universal law is that everything in your reality is a reflection of yourself. Therefore, the patterns in your life are a mirror of what’s going on inside.
Nothing ever goes away until you understand the lesson it’s trying to teach you. He may be beautiful, but don’t keep deluding yourself: if he keeps letting you down, he’s not going to change. Truthfully, in the context of your life, he’s not the one who needs to- you are. You don’t change to fit what you think he wants, you change the part where you accept anything less than what you want into your life. If he’s making you question yourself he shouldn’t be there in the first place. Don’t accept the booty call if you actually want something more, because it will not get you any closer to the date. You need to establish a standard and then not accept anything that falls short of it. If you give into the pattern’s allure, the same person with a new face will keep walking into your life leaving you perpetually unfulfilled. Each time you may be convinced that no one could rival his dreaminess, but if he treats you less than the goddess you are, then he’s not it- trust me. Once you stop tolerating whatever falls short of what you actually want, you’ll realize that his acceptance of you was not the one that ever mattered anyway. It has always been your own.
You can start by admitting that there is a pattern you don’t like and pinpointing how your behavior allows it to continue. What if you don’t know what you want, but you what you do know that it’s not this? Once again, in the midst of overwhelming thoughts and emotions, the answer is to stop thinking altogether. Instead, feel, and if it feels good then pursue it. Stop denying your intuition or discrediting the advice you don’t want to hear from close friends. The kind of feeling good I’m referring to is not the fleeting kind you experience in the moment, which leaves you unfulfilled or even with a sense of guilt afterward. I’m talking about feeling all around divine. When you encounter something that makes your heart sing, take note of it so that so that you can establish good patterns- and differentiate them from the negatives.
Say you want to wake up early enough to actually eat breakfast in the dining hall before your nine A.M. lecture. You may set your alarm every day for an idealistic 7:30 A.M., but when it comes time to motivate, the temptation of hitting snooze eight times and grabbing a power bar instead easily eclipses your primary desire for a productive morning. This is where you have to say a firm “NO,” to the temptation of perpetuating a negative pattern in your life. The only way to break negative patterns is to consciously alter your own patterns of behavior. So, you see, it starts with yourself, and you have the power to change your life.