Illuminate the Committee in Your Head – Day 23
Illuminate the Committee in your Head Day 23
Re-writing Contracts
Contracts created spontaneously – often in childhood as a survival mechanism – aren’t well thought out and likely poorly worded. Today you will re-negotiate and re-write the one you identified yesterday. Consider some deeper thought regarding each of our examples from yesterday.
-If I act right, others won’t judge me poorly. Can I control what others think of me? What do I think of me? Am I judgmental of others? Am I judgmental of myself? What if I assume everyone is judging me negatively because I am judging others negatively? A new contract could be: When I act according to my value system it includes compassion for myself and others.
-If I please others, I will have lots of friends and never be lonely. How do I know what pleases others? What if I don’t have the qualities that would most please a specific person? Do I try to attain those qualities? Do I try to be something I am not? When I am surrounded by people with whom I don’t really have all that much in common, I am not alone but often still feel lonely. What if I could find people who truly like what I like? What do I like? When I believe I have a lot to offer, I will have plenty of relationships.
-If I hide parts of myself, I can feel safe. When I hide this part of myself I have to take extra efforts to pursue it in secret and constantly censor my conversations. When people come to my home I have to hide the books, or the supplies, or whatever my hidden self wants to keep private. It is ironic because I still do not feel safe. The constant vigilance and threat of being found out feels very unsafe. What if I could be who I truly am and come out about______? When I show others my truth then there is nothing that needs protection anymore.
-If I make lots of money, I will be happy. What would I do with a lot of money? How would I earn it? Would the act of earning the money take away from the joy at all? Can I be happy without money? When I say I want money, what do I want to do with it? What do I think it will bring me? In this moment, can I think of something that feels happy? Does it have anything to do with money? When I am happy, I remember that it is a feeling available to me without any external circumstance. But I need money to live, and I am not happy when I cannot meet my needs. I can re-assess my needs. When I have come to terms with my own needs, I can be happy.
This work is not easy. Be gentle with yourself. In the example of Lori, the wanna-be singer, she did a full re-negotiation of her contract to please others before stepping into the limelight. At the root of the pattern, she discovered an old belief that in order to be a star she would have to give up being loved. Once the belief was revealed for the untruth that it was, it became much easier to re-write that contract – she can have love and be in the limelight too!
Today, try to re-negotiate or re-write your old contract. Sometimes they are just written poorly and with a few word changes they can become less limiting and more true. For example, “If I please others, then I will be loved” is a poorly worded contract because it implies that you can ONLY have love if you are pleasing others. What about when you displease them? A more accurate wording might be, “I am worthy of love as I am. What I do out of love is my choice.”
