Lately I have been invovled in re-framing my core beliefs to get down to the root of what I feel might be holding me back in some areas of my life. I looked at some of my stmbling blocks, that I have always known I have put up there myself as a good story for not always achieving what it is I set out to do.
Bieng a Type 1 personality, according to Carol Tuttle's Personality Profiling, I recognize a lot of my personality has to do with the exploration of new ideas, new concepts and always wanting to move forward and even take some risks that others might interpret as reckless. For the most part, some of my risk-taking has been a little too spontaneous and has reaped a wide range of consequences when I would leap before I looked. Lately I have become a little more cautious. But when I realized that, I decided I am always happiest when I make that gut instinct spontaneous intuitive or even impulsive decision. Some of my ideas spout off like a fountain of possibilities and I suppose that is good. What isn't good is when I procrastinate in taking action. That is where I need to be...in the place where you move forward with action!
So, back to pondering the re-framing. I feel sometimes I have struggled to become that person I want to be, partly because of my inability to put myself out there with action. So yesterday, I had a customer come into my store. The customer was quite noticibly disfigured from birth defects and she was also deaf. Her companion signed all communication to her, and she responded with very well articulated speech. I was surprised, almost shocked to hear such vocabulary and clarity. So I was assisting her with her order and decided not to treat her as a person with a disability or someone who is deaf, but like I would to a friend or colleague. I smiled and brought a different action to the experience...changing a belief that it is difficult to communicate with the deaf.
Then it struck me. She had a tatoo of a butterfly on the back of her leg and I realized, this girl must feel like she lives in a cocoon much of the time, not being able to hear what is around her...but then It hit me, she had broken free from that and was that beautiful butterfly.
I have used the analogy of the butterfly quite often, before the movie "Butterfly Effect" and Before Robert Allen's bestseller book. I recall a life lesson that I learned as a small child when I was probably about 11 years old, as my best friend and I watched as a butterfly was trying to break free from its cocoon. I remember wanting to help it out of its struggle and pry off all the white sticky stuff, but then an older gentleman walked by and saw us observing the butterfly in its predicament and said "The butterfly needs to struggle out of its cocoon in order to have the strength to fly."
I didn't imediately apply that metaphor to my own life, but over the years, that has been an underlying truth and a great teaching tool. So what effect does our struggles have on ourselves, and others, and how would be reframe our situations so that you can truly ask yourself, What would I be without this struggle? What is the timeframe, how long will it take to move forward? and What new possibilities am I creating for myself.
