You are not the patterns of your past

​Most of us will reach a point in life when we decide we want better. Whether that means we leave behind unhealthy situations or unhealthy habits or unhealthy beliefs, at some point we start to believe that we WANT better and that we ARE better than where we currently are.

At some point, we start to believe in a future better than our past.

So we move toward that future.

One might think a better future is as simple as leaving behind the struggles of the past. Only, often times struggles are bigger in the future than they ever were in the past. That's because the struggles that we clearly knew as struggles in the past, well they show up in the future disguised as comfort.

When we choose a better future, rarely does our past choose to stay behind. Mainly because much of that past is a part of our biology. It's stubbornly wired into our brain and into our ways of seeing and receiving the world.

You can leave behind your alcohol abuse, your toxic relationships, your poor financial habits, your unhealthy eating patterns - you can decide to abandon ALL of the unhealthy patterns in your life, but that doesn't mean those patterns decide to abandon you.

Our brains seek comfort. Always. And our brains don't base comfort on healthy or unhealthy, they base it on familiarity. The brain is comforted by people and experiences it best recognizes, not by whether or not those people and experiences are good for us.

If anyone has tried to make a change in their life, they know one giant thing that comes with that change: unfamiliarity. And the brain is stressed by the unfamiliar.

So guess what the brain turns to. Guess who comes knocking at our door.

Our past struggles. Those things we left behind because they weren't healthy for us, but now the brain wants to bring back into our lives disguised as a healthy fix for the discomfort we feel in the unfamiliar.

So what do we do?

I don't have an easy answer to that. I sure wish I did.

What I want us to know is those struggles that come knocking at our door disguised as comfort, just because they show up doesn't mean you invited them.

Just because those struggles show up after you left them behind doesn't mean you aren't worthy of change. It simply means your brain is still more comfortable being who you once were than it is accepting who you've decided to become.

The brain seems to know that if it can make you feel guilty or shamed over those visitors from the past, you will change your mind about not including them in your future.

Fortunately, there is more than our brains involved in who we decide to become.

We have hearts. And souls. And minds.

Hearts and souls and minds that can remind us of who we are. Of who we are battling to become, because becoming is a battle.

They can remind us that temptation isn't weak, it's our biology. And sometimes knowing our biology makes it easier to turn our backs on it in the same way we turned them on our pasts.

Find friends. Find a counselor. Find a pastor. Find a support group. Find someone who can help you pull the disguise off your past when it shows up as comfort. Find people who will remind you that you are not the patterns of your past, no matter how loudly your brain wants to scream otherwise.

Because ultimately that's how those patterns derail our willingness to become who we long to become. They make us believe that our hearts and souls and minds aren't better than the patterns of our brains.

And that - that is a lie as big in the future as it was in the past.

So a great starting point in your becoming: don't believe it.