‘Breaking Up’ with what is familiar…
Last time (See post – Allergic to Life) we began to explore the concept of breaking up with the familiar. When something is familiar, it is what we are used to, and it is also what is comfortable. But that doesn’t mean it is healthy, particularly when the familiar involves baseline patterns like anxiety, frustration, confusion and overwhelm.
To better understand our attachment to what is familiar, we must explore the concept of a belief horizon.¹ Your belief horizon can be explained as a ceiling of your beliefs around the many aspects of life, including what you believe to be true and even what you believe to be possible. Within these limits the information is familiar, and therefore comfortable, but outside these limits it becomes unfamiliar and uncomfortable. A belief horizon can become rigid, and it is often formed by whatever the collective thinking of the time may be: Earth is flat, cigarettes are safe, or germs are bad.
When this collective thinking continually shapes our belief horizon, it can keep us in these familiar, yet unhealthy loops whereby we struggle to make meaning of the world. If we consider what feelings accompany a rigid belief horizon, it is often fear. Not fear as in coming face to face with a crocodile, but fear as an underlying current, almost like constant worry. It could be fear of the unknown, fear of being different, fear of being judged, or fear of being wrong. All of these contribute to making our existing belief horizon more rigid.
How can we remove or soften this rigid ceiling, and become more open to new ways of thinking about what we believe to be true, or even possible? It is by accessing courage. Again, just like we did with fear, we must reframe what we mean by courage. It is not wrestling the crocodile we mentioned earlier, but courage as an inner confidence, that is combined with humility. When we create this combination of courage and humility, it is safe to make mistakes, get things wrong, maintain our composure and continue trying. This is the courage that we need to access to break up with what is familiar.
Next time we will explore how we can create and cultivate more healthy and regenerative feelings to accompany our expanded belief horizon.
- Martinez, Mario, The Mind Body Code. Boulder, CO, Sounds True, 2014.
Craig Logan