Nearly everyone has difficulty turning their most passionate dreams into reality.
Usually, when this happens, we blame the circumstances or ourselves.
Most of us can imagine ourselves doing work that fulfills everything important to us.
Yet, when we step out of the realm of fantasy and attempt to forge a life that is a major improvement on our current situation, we fall prey to doubts and difficulties.
Through counseling, you may discover the culprit that keeps some parts of our lives
going around and around in the same old groove.
Psychosynthesis present a model of how our brains work when we seek to expand our lives into new territory. This is a useful interpretation, not the one and only truth. Looking at your life from this perspective can give you a greatly enhanced ability to have your life turn out the way you want it to. In particular, it will help you whenever you are taking a giant step into the future. You do not need to suspend your beliefs about how your mind works. If you think your ego keeps your id from going farther than baying at the full moon, fine. Since this is just a useful model, it doesn't matter if it is the truth or not. What does matter is whether or not this model helps you be more resourceful in actually living a life you love. Let's take a look.
You are in the pits. Things seem about as bad as they could be. At the top, above 80%, you are completely in love with life. No matter what happens, you see the bright side. When you discover that your wonderful new lover is an ax murderer, you think, "Yes, but he's so good at it."
Consider your satisfaction with any part of your life in relation to this scale. Let's say your satisfaction in love relationships usually hovers around 50% on the scale. Your love life is OK but not great. Then something happens that drives your level of satisfaction down to 10 or a 20%. Unlike Humpty Dumpty, it does not take all the king's horses and all the king's men to put you back together again. It just takes time. Sooner or later, you will find yourself back at the good old 50% level again. Rarely do people stay deep in the pits for long. Somehow they find their way back to their usual level of satisfaction. They may change partners to get back to 50% or they may work things out in their existing relationship. They will do anything to return to their usual, customary level of satisfaction. It is not 100%, it's not 90% but it is what they are used to. Like a thermostat, we seem to be set for a certain "temperature" of satisfaction.
What happens when a miracle occurs and your love life really takes off? Your relationship flourishes or you fall in love. Suddenly, you find yourself on cloud nine. In this state of bliss, even washing the dishes can feel like dancing through fields of flowers. Life has become perfectly satisfying. You have soared to 90 to 100% on our chart. Will it last? Will you live happily forever after? Of course not. Either you will slowly drift back to 50% or you will somehow screw it up so you land with a thud back at 50%. You may sincerely want to have a very satisfying love life. It could be something you strive for, work for, and care about deeply. But you keep winding up at good old, same old, predictable 50%. Why?
Right now, you may be asking, "What does all this have to do with choosing a career?" Nothing at all if your life, your work is as deeply fulfilling as you'd like it to be. Nothing at all if you are willing to leave your life to the ebb and flow of circumstance. If you plan to have a deeply satisfying career, one that goes beyond the ordinary level of satisfaction and success most people accept, then it may be worth noticing that there seems to be a mechanism at work that tends to keep people stuck to the same spot on the flypaper of life. The better you are at un-sticking the stuck, the more power you have to say how your life will be.
Living things naturally return to a state of balance. When they are disturbed by forces acting on them, our inner machinery kicks in and returns us to a balanced state of equilibrium, just like this seesaw. Homeostasis is the word we use to describe the ability of an organism to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes. Most of the systems in animal and human physiology are controlled by homeostasis. We don't like to be off balance. We tend to keep things at an even keel. This system operates at all levels. Our blood stays the same temperature. Except for extraordinary exceptions, when people find ways to intervene using methods more powerful than our tendency to equilibrium, our habits, behaviors, thoughts and our quality of life stay pretty much the same too. We say, "I'm in a rut." or "I'm stuck in the same old groove."
Every time something in our lives gets out of balance, our internal machinery sets off behaviors designed to return us to equilibrium. In the illustration called "Out of equilibrium," the things under the ends of the seesaw are switches. You can see that when balance is disturbed, the seesaw tips a little bit one way or the other and it pushes one of the switches. Pushing one of the switches sets off a behavior designed to return you to equilibrium. Notice that no matter which way the seesaw moves, it sets off one of the switches. So, whether your life has hit the skids or is on cloud nine, powerful forces of homeostasis are at work to return you to equilibrium.
The Problem with the Solution
If you think about it, whenever you are out of equilibrium, off balance, you are in a state of reaction. If you had a few angry bees buzzing around your head, you would likely be in a state of upset, reacting by having all of your thoughts focused on your bee problem. If someone, at that moment, asked you "What's the capitol of Albania?", your brain would be completely unavailable to deal with that question. You would be totally focused on the bees. So, being in a state where you are out of balance may be useful for dealing with the current emergency but it narrows your ability to deal with other things. Evolution has developed a brilliant solution: the habit.
The Formation of Habits
If you were one of Mother Nature's engineers, charged with improving the design of mammal survival devices, you would try to find some way the animal could come face-to-face with reoccurring threats and deal with them successfully without getting so upset that it was incapacitated. That's exactly what nature does. After the mammal repeats something a few times, it becomes a habit. A habit is an automated reaction designed to keep you at equilibrium while, at the same time successfully dealing with a threat. Habits get the job done without all the upset. The horse learns to stay away from the tall grass. When it must travel near tall grass, it becomes more alert without getting completely knocked out of equilibrium. Whatever strategy it used successfully to survive becomes the standard mode of operation rather than a reaction that is only triggered when there is a threat. It is no longer upset. It has learned. Horses take the same path up the hill, time after time. They are creatures of habit, predictable. Much of what you and I do comes from this mammal part of our brains. We too are creatures of habit. The first time I drove a car on a narrow two lane road, the cars whizzing by in the other direction seemed like a huge threat to my survival. Every ounce of my attention was concentrated on them. After a few days' experience, I paid no conscious attention to them. Once anything has become a habit, we don't have to pay attention to it anymore. The rub with this elegant piece of survival machinery is that, generally speaking, we are governed by our habits. When we are not aware that our lives are run by pre-programmed software, it becomes very difficult to captain our own ship.
The Human Brain
The development of our human brain was another major transformation in the evolution of intelligence. One of the new features nature gave us is our ability to project ourselves into situations that haven't happened yet. You and I can stand on a hilltop, look out across the landscape and think, "You know, it looks to me like that could be a field where lions might hang out." When we imagine walking through the field and being attacked by lions, we feel fear, have a surge of adrenaline and decide to go another way. This design feature gives us an enormous survival advantage. We can imagine potential threats without having to actually experience them.
Consider this: You come out of the movie theater and discover that it is pouring rain. A dark alley runs back along the side of the theater. You realize that you could save two blocks getting to your car if you cut through the alley. As you consider taking the short cut through the alley, you imagine muggers hiding in its shadowy recesses. You feel a chill of fear just thinking about it. You decide to stick to the safer, well-lit main street. What is happening here is that you get yanked out of equilibrium just thinking about walking through the alley. Unlike the horse, you don't have to get mugged to learn.
So, we possess an extraordinary survival advantage. But along with the benefits comes the biggest problem faced by people who wish to create anything new in their lives. The big problem is that the most advanced human parts of our survival systems operate exactly the same way the reptile and mammal parts do. If something throws you out of equilibrium, your homeostasis machinery reacts automatically. The design function of these systems on all levels, from the human part of your brain down to the ancient primordial parts of it, is survival. All the parts of your survival system defend your physical body from harm as they do for the horse and the frog. See the illustration called "Human Brain."
There are endless "Yeahbuts" that get in the way of
choosing and creating the perfect career.
Here are a few of my own personal favorites:
• I'm too young, too old, too stupid, too smart.
• I'm the wrong gender. The wrong color.
• I didn't/ don't/ won't have the right opportunities.
• I have lots of energy and stick-to-itiveness. It's just soooo difficult to decide what to do. If only I could decide.
• I'm constrained by my circumstances, my mortgage, my bad back, no time. The circumstances are like a vice around me, holding me here. I can't do anything about it.
• I don't have enough will power. I'm not a risk-taker.
• I'm not committed enough. I have this habit of quitting.
• I couldn't do anything I would really want to do.
• I'm really trying. It's not my fault. Really!
• I don't have enough money. I don't have enough talent.
• I can't do what I want because the fun careers pay less.
• I'm sensitive, an artist. I couldn't possibly have a regular job because I see through the banalities of crass materialism.
• I want to help people, but this is a cruel, heartless world where only the lawyers win.
• It takes putting my shoulder to the grindstone, year after year, and that's not my style.
• It's hopeless. I have this fatal flaw. It's my karma.
• I'm an immigrant. My English isn't good enough.
• I should have been born in an earlier time.
• I don't have the courage to go out and push and make cold calls and do the things that I need to do to get that kind of job I want.
• I'm over- or under-educated, over- or under-qualified, have too much or too little experience and all the experience I have is really a detriment because it's in the wrong field.
• I just got out of college. They didn't teach me what Shinola is anyway.
• I went to the wrong college, didn't have enough college, didn't go to college, a degree in an area that is completely useless in today's market place.
• My skills are antiquated, they're outdated, under rated.
• What makes me think I can decide now, when I have failed to for all these years?
For more information or to schedule a Free half hour consultation:
Contact Marjorie Gross, Holistic Therapist
Psychosynthesist, Life Counselor
Integrating Mind – Body - Spirit
Free half hour consultation
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Marjorie
Directions to my office at Albany Life Works
Albany Lifeworks Center
200 Trillium Lane
Albany, NY 12203
518-862-1974 ext 95
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