My sick lappie taught me that we humans typically ignore the first few things that start to go ‘wrong’ or ‘belly up’! We first let little things slide, we choose not to notice, until one day it all goes pear shaped!
My laptop. My poor, sick laptop. It seemed ‘ok’, in that first little moment I noticed a change, just a bit slow. The error warnings slowly followed, with little glitches every now and then. There were times I would say to myself “Hmmm that’s interesting... I wonder if it’s having issues? Maybe I should take it to someone”. Then kicked in the usual “NAH, IT’S NOT THAT BIG OF AN ISSUE”. After all, it would normally fix itself.
Months later and it’s functionality began to decline. The time lags were more frequent and lasted longer, the pages did not load, and the “sorry this page timed out” messages kept flashing. I put up with it because the thought of going in to do something about it made me uncomfortable. It seemed time consuming and my work productivity would suffer. I didn’t have a back up and I didn’t want to spend the money.
And so it continued for months. Another 10 minutes to open a page, another 30 minutes just to wake up and say hello to me, until I had major performance issues, and was actively thought...”I'm going to have to do something about this - this a MAJOR issue Huston”!
Then it happened. A few week later I was preparing myself for a major launch of a program and my lappie did not do anything I ask it. My hand was forced and the ‘uncomfortablness’ of it rose up to greet me and I was forced to take it in. It got ridiculous running my business off my phone (which I did not like one bit) and so many things I need to do were SO MUCH harder (have you ever tried to edit videos on a phone?). So I took it to someone I trusted and awaited the diagnosis.
The diagnosis came
”Your hard drive is about to crash Jacquie!
It has been through so many airport security stations that it has worn the hard drive down to almost non-existent levels of operation”.
In that moment I wondered to myself, “How are my own internal hard drive and software systems doing? If this one in my computer is struggling, maybe I’m experiencing this on some level as well”. There seemed to be some truth in that for me when I spoke internally and heart my gut whisper….”yesss”.
Life often mirrors internal processes and it is so common that external issues like this relate to what’s really going on inside us. Looking inwards to our body, mind and personal relationships, can show us where things are out of balance.
Not only did I now have to invest in a brand new desktop system (something that had been on my top 100 goals for 2018 anyway, but still a massive investment), the lovely IT guy encouraged me to buy it that day! It was the last year of the financial calendar. “Oh OK”, I said and anxiously placed the order for my new system. I was both excited and slightly terrified because I'd just spent quite a bit of money and that was a bit of a trigger for me.....
Cue a change in approach for me: I spent quite a lot of time repeating Louise Hays quotes, saying "I love Money and Money loves me"....over and over, then a bucket load of tapping out my Cortices. I even did a self BodyTalk session...quiet interesting really...and the mass amount of tension I was feeling started to release and resolve with ease! NOW, I was just left with the excitement of getting my new supercharged, turbo twin engine desktop system!!! Broom broom!
What a valuable experience this had been for me! After purchasing everything and clearing all the tension around that, it paved enough way for me to ask myself the question…”Why did I wait? Why did I let it get that bad?”
I automatically went into reflection process and realised the pattern.
I had done the exact same thing many times before where I had sat with something until it had become SO uncomfortable, stressful, painful, and SUFFOCATING that I had very little choice towards the end. It always went like this: STAY in the situation (whatever it was), RETREAT (leave, not doing anything about it) or MOVE forward (do something about it).
SO… it's not just something that I have done in the past but we as humans have a huge tendency to doing this, ALL THE TIME! If you look around you will probably notice and be surprised at how often you let something start out kinda annoying, let it fester bit by bit until it gets so bad that things either erupt or it all implodes. We stay until it's so uncomfortable that it forces and initiates change.
FYI, that's also what is generally happening when someone has things like kidney stones, gallbladder stones, attacks, inflammation, rupture of the appendix. All of these things are aligned with being the catalyst that initiates the release and brings change from an ongoing long-term major stressor that has not been dealt with and therefore festered to the surface!.
Which is a good thing. So remember that in the future...if you get really uncomfortable..what needs to change?
Also recognise that it's a pretty crappy habit to keep running over and over… Why not move off from that spot at the first signs of things not being ok?
In other words that first time I saw that my lappie was slow and not doing so great, why did I not go into action mode and do something about that?
Because that would have meant that I would not have gone through the months and MONTHS of angst and swearing to my computer because it wouldn't work properly.
For everyone, the WHY I let myself become the frog in the boiling water experiment until it’s too late is vastly different. Your WHY will be different to my WHY, and over the 12+ years of facilitating BodyTalk sessions every time this has come up as a priority to be addressed, it has always looked very different.
SO my new pledge, right in that moment was to become a person who moved off from that first position of noticing that something is uncomfortable and doing something about it. It is a brilliant feeling! There is a sense of achievement, happiness, completion, openness and it’s almost like it gives me moor room to breath. It’s my new favourite kind of movement….action!
Do you have a metaphorical dodgy computer that is struggling?
Do I want to be the kind of person who takes action and resolves it before it becomes a huge issue?
You can do that in many ways by recognising that you have that issue, consciously working on it will help enormously. But you will also need to get to the underlying issues that had set up that pattern in the first place, otherwise it tends to come in the back door all sneaky again, and before long you realise it’s returned and you're dealing with another really long uncomfortable issue.
A BodyTalk session is brilliant for that and the My Incredible Orbit Village is exceptionally valuable in supporting you all the way through that process!
All my best,
Jacquie xx