Part of what I teach is non-attachment. We love to be attached to our belief systems, our emotions, our perceptions, and the way things are because it keeps us right and it keeps us comfortable.
But really, having a paradigm shift is a very exciting thing. When when I was nine years old, my parents moved us to Buenos Aires, Argentina from a typical tree-lined village in a suburb of New York City.
I had that American childhood and then suddenly was plonked into Buenos Aires! What a paradigm shift that was, on all sorts of levels.
New culture, living in a city, a different government, a new language, new friends, new school, and a new way to have to perceive everything that up until then, had been my normal childhood.
Was it easy? No, but it was also exciting because I was just a kid. It’s so much easier to accept a new paradigm when you’re still in your formative years.
I’m really grateful for that time in my life now because it prepared me as a norm to accept new paradigms and new opportunities. And life throws new opportunities and challenges at us all of the time.
So the easiest way to get into non-attachment is to put yourself out of your comfort zone on a regular basis, so that you can experience a self-imposed paradigm shift, because when you do that it shows you a whole new aspect of yourself.
It’s not always comfortable, but for sure we always learn something new about ourselves. We can be attached to all sorts of things.
One of the things I swore I would never do in 100 million years was have a tattoo because although they’re kind of cool on other people, I’m not from that generation and it wasn’t something that I ever really felt was for me. I also wasn’t overly thrilled seeing them on other people, I couldn’t see the point.
I was attached to that belief and I swore out loud all the time, even though my son has a tattoo and lots of people I know have tattoos and it’s their personal choice, so no judgement to them. But I swore never, never would I get one.
And then my beloved Bliss, my 18 and a half year old cat died about three weeks ago. And it was devastating. It flattened me. I couldn’t believe how sad I was to lose my familiar.
The vet sent me little paw prints of hers and they were just so adorable. I showed them to my goddaughter who said, “Oh, that’s so cute. Why don’t you have that as a little tattoo?”
My response to her was, “Stop that immediately young lady!” Because immediately I knew in the core of my being that that was absolutely the perfect thing for me to do.
Because am I attached to my cat? Yes, I am. Is she gone? Yes, she is. I will not stay attached to my grief at her passing, but could I find a way to have her with me always? Yes, I could. I could have her little paw print tattooed on me. So in that moment I changed my perspective on tattoos for me, and after thinking about it for a week, went ahead and did that. So never say never because you never know. Right?
I also swore I’d never moved back to the frozen north in England and turns out that was the best thing I could have ever done. Because I came back, healed the last remaining things I needed to heal here and now I’m super happy to live here.
But we get very attached to our childhood perceptions too. And we formed our childhood perceptions when we didn’t have all of the information available to us.
So when you push yourself out of your comfort zone into a new experience that might be really uncomfortable, it can reflect back to you what you may need to work on. You can really learn a lot about yourself.
Because I want to do a TEDx talk this year and I am on a course learning how you go about that, I thought it would be interesting to push myself outside of my comfort zone and do a stand up comedy course.
I can be funny, but I’m no stand up comedian. It was not comfortable having to do comedy, but my reasoning was that if I have to be funny for five whole minutes and entertain people on stage, then certainly giving a speech about something I’m passionate about can’t possibly be that bad.
And maybe I’d really enjoy it and end up doing stand up comedy? Well, you know, I didn’t really enjoy it. I performed it. It was fine. No, I’m probably not going to do that again. It didn’t feel like me. It didn’t feel congruent with who I was. But I learned a lot about myself in the process.
Last year, I wanted to clear up some old beliefs I had about myself and I wanted to get in touch with my post menopause body at 60. So I went on a sacred sexuality retreat. Surprise! I was the oldest person there! Naked a fair amount of the time. I can tell you that was not comfortable at all. I was so self conscious and nervous a lot of the time.
But I’m really glad I did it because I learned so much about myself and talking to all of the other people there who were in the same boat as I, and hearing everybody else’s stories, really put my own stuff in perspective.
Although I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was that shifted me, so much healing came out of that experience. I was about as far out of my comfort zone as I could have been. But I’m really, really glad I did it.
So how are you going to get out of your fixed mindset, your attachment to how things have to be and create a new paradigm for yourself?
How are you going to push yourself outside of your comfort zone so that you can expand your ability to perceive things in a new way?
It doesn’t mean that it’s going to become your new way. It’s just something to experience that is different and new, so you can find out how you feel when your boundaries are expanding.
If every year you would do something pretty major to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to create a new paradigm shift for yourself so that you can experience a whole new way of looking at the world, you’ll start to heal and shift really quickly.
And it might not be for you, that’s okay. But then you’ll find out at a deep level what triggers you and what you need to work on. It’s a much faster approach than reading any self help book. Because you’re in it and you’re feeling all of your emotions all at once and you’ve got all of the internal stuff going on. You’re listening to your mind talk, you’re feeling all of the energy in your body. It’s a great way to get in touch with yourself.
So if you want to experience non-attachment to your boxed in way of thinking and to all of the ways that you’re perhaps holding yourself back, then consciously choose something that will challenge you.
What I hear all the time from my clients is, “I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know who to ask. I don’t know what to do. Oh, yes… but… yes, but…”
You need to expand past the edges of what you know, in order to find the whole new world that’s out there waiting for you.
I’m really good at helping people realise that and I’m really good at helping you look outside of your own imposed walls that you put around yourself. So why not book a mind shift call with me so that we can have that chat? It could be a life changing moment for you. I look forward to hearing from you all.
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