The Magic of Attribution

The Magic of Attribution
 
I saw an article online yesterday about how we set the habits and patterns of our lives by the age of seven and how it’s set in stone from then on. Too bad for you. :)
 
This is so far from being true. If it were true, no one would ever change anything, ever over the age of seven. And that is observably not true.
 
What is true is that every human being creates their own world in response to what they see happening around them. A response to "Now", if you will.
 
Children (and adults) create habits of thought and create their world in response to the worlds they are presented with. The world of their parents, the world of their siblings, and the worlds of their teachers and so on. "Our World" is essentially the grouping of habitual thoughts, perceptions, preferences, rules and things we believe to be true that we don't question anymore and take at face value as true.
 
What we don’t realize is that we do this our whole lives. We also dissolve worlds as easily as we create worlds. This is a massive distinction. The dissolution of worlds.
 
When we realize some aspect of our world isn't true, and we only thought it to be true, it falls away pretty quickly. Most people have experienced this phenomenon at some point in their lives. Something we thought as a small child turns out to be not true, and our world shifts, sometimes dramatically.
 
A client of mine grew up being abused by her Mum.
 
During our conversations together, she started to see that she had created a world in response to that abuse and then continued to live in it. She hadn't realized that she'd created it and she hadn't known it could dissolve. She had attributed her world, understandably, to her mother's behaviour from the past. If that is the cause, then nothing can ever really change and can only be coped with.
 
Here is her story in her words (shared anonymously with her permission) and what changed for her all of a sudden:
 
"My mum created an unusual world for herself and then forced me to live in it - I created an unusual combination of worlds for myself to live in to stay sane. Or to simply live. We would say to survive. But really it was the only thing I could do. From a neutral perspective, we accept the world we are seemingly presented with, and we create our own in response, unless we question it.
 
I didn’t create for safety or survival; I created because that was the world I lived in. All humans do this when we make meaning, decide rules, create beliefs. We build the world we live in.
 
As long as I looked for how to feel safe or as long as I attributed the reason I was anxious to a desire for survival, nothing shifted. Because that looked true.
 
As soon as I started to live Now (and not in the past), guided by my own real-now-time-guidance, I started to rewire - to live now. I stopped living then. It was very simple. I just looked at what was true now and what I want to do now.
 
When I was a child, I was living Now - then. The only problem was that at some point I stopped living Now. And started living Then.
 
In living Now, now, I began to see the games or patterns I had habitually picked up and forgotten about. One by one, I dropped them. The feeling will tell you - as it always does. It feels bad to live in the past.
 
I think the worst thing people can do is to assume or attribute current unwanted habits of thought to a past need for safety. That keeps you looking, looking, looking in that direction - to the past.
 
You know you are safe now. If the habit you want to drop was really about actual safety, you would have dropped it. I did.
 
Why something started in the past is not useful information. Or mostly not useful. Knowing how to live now is the useful information.
 
The shift can only happen when you stop trying to figure it out; when I stopped trying to convince myself but started living and creating a world in response to now. Living in the feeling of myself - Now."
 
What my client saw was that if she attributed the cause of her anxiety or feelings and behaviour to what had happened in the past, then she was stuck living in that world and nothing changed for her now.
 
As soon as she attributed the cause of her feelings and behaviour to a habit she's doing now of creating a world with thought that she no longer needs and re-focused on what is actually happening now in real time, the anxiety and behaviours began to fall away. She was no longer inadvertently putting fuel onto the fire of the past.
 
She started creating thought and living from actual life now.
 
It all came down to attribution of cause.
 
If you would like clarity around anything you might be struggling with and would like to live more alive, have a look at my ongoing offerings that might be a good fit for you: https://www.liveyouralivelife.com/work-with-sara-joy 

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With Love, 

Sara Joy
 

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