Turnarounds

©2012 Joan Newcomb

Transformation often comes with no external changes at all.  Outside, the circumstances remain the same. The cast of characters remain the same - your boss is still your boss, your neighbor is still your neighbor, your spouse is still your spouse.  Your paycheck comes in, the bills need paying, your body still creaks in the morning and your children still roll their eyes at anything you say.

Change can come in an instant with a shift of perspective.  Instead of feeling that things are happening to you, there's an awareness that you create your reality.  Your boss is no longer threatening because you no longer create yourself to be the victim at work.  Your neighbor is free to mow his lawn at 8am on Sundays just as you are free to have BBQs with buddies on Saturday night.  Your spouse isn't controlling, he or she is just highly organized and time-conscious, which relieves you of having to be so yourself.

Money becomes an expression of appreciation - your work is appreciated and you receive money for it.  You appreciate having lights and water and a roof over your head, so bill paying becomes an act of gratitude.  Bodies are creaky, but enjoy a morning stretch.  And kids - you can roll your eyes at anything they say!

Years ago I had a woman in my meditation class whom I had always thought of as tall and thin.  One day I looked at her and realized, at middle age, she had a few extra pounds.  And the thought occurred to me, 'tall bodies can handle extra weight'.  Overnight people started asking me if I'd been on a diet.  The scale still showed me the same numbers, but I carried myself differently when I reframed what my own, tall body could carry.

My kids' choices became easier for me when I realized that I'd just manufactured their body & gave them initial driving lessons.  Their road trip through life is between them & their Higher Power.

Our strongest reactions to things come because we have mental image picture "lit up" that have intense emotions attached to them.  We get triggered by something someone has said (or written).  When we turn the thought/image around, it can deenergize the whole situation.  No matter how "true" our version of reality had felt before, there's always a different point of view.

There are ways to create turnarounds.  Byron Katie has a series of questions that help you look at your stress-inducing thoughts.  The final part has you turn the thought around.  "They shouldn't be so selfish" becomes "They SHOULD be so selfish", or "I shouldn't be so selfish", of "*I* should be so selfish", which spurs a series of revelations - I need to create more time for self-care, for instance.

If you can't come up with a phrase or thought that is causing your intense feelings, you can imagine it as a big picture. The picture is coated with emotion, so imagine snipping a corner off of it, and letting the feeling drain out.  It goes from muddled and splashed color to a black and white line drawing.  And sometimes disintegrates entirely.

Or you can highlight and delete a symbol, such as a rose or anything else you'd like to make up to represent whatever it is that's ticking you off or keeping you stuck in a situation.

Or you can imagine a door in front of you to a parallel reality where something different is going on, and step through it.

Sometimes change happens immediately, sometimes you need to do it a couple of times, or daily, for transformation to unfold.

Try any (or all) of these for 7 days, and see what happens!