Let’s get philosophical…
If you are open to accepting that the way you think, believe, act and live can radically change with the simple act of recognizing a moment in time as a wise sage that wandered by to teach you something, then you will understand today’s blog. Maybe I write too much about epiphany, but personally, I cannot think of any other single event in the human experience that has the profound effect that epiphany can have on a person. The most important thing about these moments is your willingness to accept the process of acquiring understanding and knowledge through thought. In these experiences you are given teachable moments and it requires either a hunger for awareness or humility to accept them. Some people are so hard to teach that even when they come across truth in their own heads, they reject it because it might force them to change and change is hard… Have you ever had the experience of arguing with someone and they are blatantly wrong and refuse to accept the truth? Probably the most frustrating thing about interactive relationships is when one partner just refuses to see that they are undeniably wrong…. Now imagine just how individually conflicted a person has to be to reject some real epiphanic, SELF EVIDENT truth that they themselves realized? My opinion? I don’t think a human can fully reject their own realized truth. In my own experience, once a powerful epiphany creeps in, it doesn’t go away, even when I continually reject it. Instead it causes cognitive dissonance until I accept that I am wrong and change or accept that I am wrong and continue with my wrong behaviors acknowledging that I am in fact, thoroughly wrong. When you identify with your addiction, you say “vodka drinking is a part of my personality.” And then the thought arises that vodka drinking may be a part of your personality but it is detrimental to your health and is robbing you of the full experience of life. Now those two thoughts conflict. We have two truths that come up against one another and therein lies the cognitive dissonance. Stopping drinking will alter a fundamental part of you. Stopping drinking will terminate relationships or at the very least, minimize them. “If I change my behaviors, then my relationships with others will change” is a scary fucking thought, not only for you but for the people in your circle. Go ahead and tell your circle of friends you are thinking of stopping the activity that holds you all together… You will get negative feedback…
This doesn’t just apply to substance use either… The angry person who doesn’t want to be angry anymore… The overweight person who suddenly realizes that the entire problem lies within them…. All of these people have one thing in common, acceptance of inner truths.
Let’s take a look at a made up epiphany and look at some choices that could be made from it…
Often, an epiphany begins with a small, everyday occurrence or experience. For example:
In the middle of a typical argument with his wife, a man realizes he has been the one causing every single argument, and that in order to keep his marriage, he must stop being such an aggressive person.
In this example, the man’s epiphany is prompted by an everyday argument. The revelation, though, rises above everyday thought: he realizes he must change his attitude in order to fix his marriage. Now he has a choice: Either stop with his aggressive behaviors and mark the event as a teachable moment or go to war with himself and end his marriage because at best change is difficult especially when you have to admit faulty logic and declare that you are the problem. That takes courage…
The Epiphanic moment is the judge in your head slamming the gavel down, the moment of truth when you realize that you are the agent of change in your life. “I need to be a kinder person” is not a death sentence to your personality. It isn’t a sign of weakness that you have a realization that you need to change. The moment you have thoughts like these are freeing you from your self-imposed prison. Maybe it hurts to change, maybe it will take some time, but stop arguing with patently obvious truths that you personally birthed. When you get a thought that stops you in your tracks, celebrate that moment! Let yourself experience that flash of self evident reality fully. When the nagging suspicion lights up in your head like a marquee sign on Broadway, you just got a gift.
Stop handing yourself excuses… Excuses give failure merit and when you are failing at something that you know you can do, excusing it compounds the issues… The student who sees the poor grades on a report card and says, “Classes are so hard…” instead of “I need to buckle down and study more…” The overweight person who says “My metabolism is too slow…” instead of “I am out of control…” The smoker who says “I’ve tried everything and just can’t stop smoking.” Instead of “I need to make a list of what I have tried so I can see what hasn’t worked and try again with a different approach….” This list could go on and on but the thread that ties them all together is the similarity that all the excuses are self-defeating nonsense that could easily be reframed if you truly WANTED to change… Most people with these or comparable problems already know that the issue lies with them, they refuse to accept the hard truth so they hand themselves a load of bullshit, stay the course of disaster and blame the problem on something beyond their control.
Continuing unhealthy behaviors is like skydiving without a parachute. You put on a backpack and the pilot says, there is no parachute in that and you say “I know but it will work out for me…” You get in the plane and lead skydiver says, that isn’t a parachute, it’s a backpack and you say “I know but it will work out for me…” You step up to the door and right before you leap, someone screams that you’re killing yourself and you give a thumbs up, scream “It’s fine, I know what I’m doing!!!” Right before you hit the ground at 120 miles per hour, your last thought is “I should have listened…” The smoker diagnosed with lung cancer, the obese person diagnosed with diabetes and the substance abuser with liver cancer all have the revelation that they should have fucking listened…
Let’s go back to the man who realizes that his behaviors are causing the arguments with his wife. Now imagine that when that thought crosses his mind he stops and asks his wife if she will help him stop being a dickhead about everything. Imagine the obese person waking up and cleaning out the cabinets and going to the store to fill them back up with healthy food. Imagine the smoker, laying down the pack, or the alcoholic emptying the bottle into the sink… (or in my case putting it in the garage and by the way, it’s still out there on the shelf… I ran into the other day and laughed…) Think of the power that you could show over the things that you once considered overwhelming. The C student who suddenly devotes three hours a day to their studies gets straight A’s for the first time.
It’s all on you, reader… I’m not saying you won’t require help or that it will be easy, but I am saying that I can’t help you up if you don’t first reach out…
Day 31… For the first time ever, I punched through the 30 Day Challenge wall… I have never taken on anything longer than 30 days when it comes to challenges so I am in new territory. Did a quick scan of the physical body today and although my joints ache a little from the abuse, all is still a go…
Listen to yourself today, evaluate what you have been trying to tell yourself and listen because you really do know what is best for you…
Get to work…
Love ya, mean it…
See you tomorrow…
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