If wasn't weight loss it was a tendency to drink too much or smoke (and now vape), or to become so irate about midwifery practice issues that I looked and sounded aggressive. Each of these areas of my life over the years has caused me and others pain, at times my life was coloured by them and I felt deeply that I wanted to change, I tried loads of ways of being different and time and time again I failed.
No matter how hard I tried consciously and how many self help techniques I learned, that sense of being trapped inside behaviours that just wouldn't go away seemed to be the colour wash of my life.
So, 28 stone plus later, widowed, and depressed I hit what felt to me like rock bottom. It was around this time some 10 years ago, 'I' kind of woke up, and it took the human being I loved the most in the world at the time, breathing her last in my arms.
I've realised since then that waking up to what's really running our lives doesn't have to take a sledge hammer, who knew? An insight will do it, a moment of awareness; for me it was noticing that my internal conversation or thinking had a mind of its own, I didn't need to will my thoughts into being, they just happened.
If you don't believe me test it out, sit for 10 minutes and just count your breaths to 10, try to stay with the count only, and see what happens?All communication between human beings is driven by unconscious process and our most fundamental relationship, the one we have with ourselves is no different.
I came to understand that my life was almost being lived automatically based on these less than conscious internal conversations, which in turn, had feeder stories which I had been retelling myself for years and years.
The starting place for crafting a story I wanted to live in began when I started to notice the power of my less than conscious mind to to create a kind of direction for the focus of my life.........bringing conscious and less than conscious process into harmony is a life long event.
Do you have habits you wanna change? My starting point was noticing the internal stories, that felt real, but only really existed in my head.
Who knew?
As birth professionals we know that there is no such thing as the right way to give birth, all there is, is just the way a woman gives birth on the day that she does. No two women have the same experience, but every woman lives the rest of her life inside the story she is telling herself about the birth. Her story becomes for her a mental habit, that influences deeply the quality of her life.
Today we are starting a series of blogs that centre around the theme of the stories we live in. The 10 minute video that comes with todays blog introduces the subject and sets the scene for what’s to follow.