Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about starting small. It's a very important topic. We can look at this in a physical way and also in relationships. And in relationships I think is where it's challenging. Starting small with physical things. So let's say I want to lose weight or something like, these are typical things that people are usually trying to achieve. It always starts with one action. Okay, tomorrow I'm going to eat this, or I have to go shopping for this, or tomorrow I'm gonna exercise, whatever. I'm creating a plan for action, physical action, and I have to start one day at a time, right? I have to start one meal at a time, one exercise session at a time. But I find that with relationship. A lot of times, let's say I'm trying to change a personality trait of mine in relationships. So for instance, let's say I wanna stop being angry, or maybe I'd like to stop being jealous or stop feeling like nobody's paying attention to me. Like maybe I want attention or I don't feel seen, or I don't feel appreciated. Maybe I'd like to stop that. So starting small would mean don't try to change it right away in the relationship where it is most intense. So for instance, if I say I wanna feel more empowered in my life and I'm in a. Let's say I'm in a marriage situation that's not good, or maybe a job that I'm not happy in, and I say I wanna feel more empowered. I wanna make changes. Maybe I can start making changes and start feeling empowered in other ways before I tackle the big things. That's not to say that I allow the situation to become abusive or dangerous or self-destructive. So nothing like that. But sometimes I find that we get motivated to change something and then we start trying to change the most intense version that we have of it. So I find that sometimes we feel like we wanna change something and we get very enthusiastic. Maybe we have a realization that we'd like to change some aspect of our personality, and we want to go right to the relationship where it's showing up the most painful to try to change it. So this episode is about how can I start small and help myself build up the new personality trait or get over the old personality trait, because the principle is that even though I may not be working on the big, where it's showing up the most, like in that relationship or with that family member, or in the job or in this aspect of my physical health, if that is the place where it's causing the most pain, sometimes it's better to start somewhere else and get a little bit of success. So for instance, let's say I find myself very frustrated at work and maybe I'm complaining at work or so forth, and I would like to stop complaining, but I can't seem to stop. And so in my life, I can say that there is some aspect of my personality that keeps coming back at work, and I'm working on it because it seems like I have this impulsiveness and whenever there's certain circumstances at work that impulsiveness comes out. And I find that's true in other areas as well. So what I'm doing now is I'm working on. Not being impulsive in areas that aren't so attractive or charged. So maybe it would be at home or it would be with a family gathering, or it would be so start use the same issue, but work on it in a place that's not so emotionally charged. I hope that makes sense, but let's add a little bit more understanding there. The reason is because wherever I find that I am showing that personality trait, the personality trait is part of a worldview or part of a perception, a reaction mechanism that's in me all the time. And maybe if I'm honest, or I can take a look and see, is that personality trait showing up in other places? So maybe find a place that's benign. Another example would be, let's say you want to find more time for yourself, or you want to start setting boundaries in your life, and let's say you have. Family relationships that are very closely connected and maybe not in a healthy way. So the family things may not be so easy to set those boundaries right away, but maybe you can work on it at the level of friends. So in my experience, I was able to do that actually. Remove some friends or if they were acquaintances, maybe begin to let them go so that I could have more energy for myself. It was also a very good way. For me to practice things to say in order to set boundaries. For instance, a share, something happened in class the other day. One of the students asked, what should she do with her friends because she started practicing meditation and started changing, like her personality started to change and her priorities began to change a little bit. And so her friends were making fun of her and she didn't know what to do. So I told her, you can, Somebody else in the class recommended saying something like, that's hurting my feelings, or something like that. And I said, well, you can also practice just. Removing yourself from the situation and say, you know, excuse me, I have to go, you know, see you guys later. I, I have to go now. So there's a way to deal with that. So the, what I'm talking about now is boundaries. So in that case, she was able to have an idea of what to say in terms of boundaries. So when I am working on myself, so in that case, she was noticing that she was changing and she was getting some reaction from other people. But maybe I'm trying to actually change something. Maybe I have a very painful relationship with my sibling, or my parent or my spouse, and it's very entrenched and maybe very emotional. And maybe too emotional to face completely. Maybe I'm a little confused about it, or maybe I feel a little guilty. Maybe I feel a little fearful, or I don't wanna hurt them, or I'm basically not very clear. But I know that I want the pain to stop of whatever is not working, but I'm not totally clear. So maybe I could work on that with other relationships. Maybe I can help myself learn how to set boundaries. Maybe I can start prioritizing my own self care. Maybe I can start studying. In other words, when something in our life is glaring us in the face, like it's hurting, sometimes we have to get away from it right away, but sometimes we can't. For one reason or another, we can't walk away immediately. It's family. It's very difficult. I know there are situations out there where people go no contact and things like that, and that's fine. There are times for that too. But in this case, I'm saying that you can help yourself by practicing the same solution in more benign areas at work with acquaintances, coworkers, and what that does. The spiritual principle behind that is that when you start to change that personality trait, like balancing out boundaries with, let's say, over talking or maybe gossiping or feeling bad about a relationship, maybe I'd rather set boundaries. Maybe I'd be rather be quiet. So if I can practice those skills. Using the power of silence, using boundaries, maybe I can practice, then I can go back when I feel stronger and bring that into the higher charged situations. I will say that once we start practicing this, our self-respect gets greater. We're able to think more clearly, and maybe we'll also be able to discern more what's going on in those higher charged situations. I can say for me that that was the case. Whenever there was a really highly charged situation, whether it was family or at work or wherever, I felt confused a lot of times and scared, and I wasn't sure what to do about it. I continued my practice, my meditation practice, my study, everything that I was doing on a day-to-day basis. You could also call that starting small like I am practicing and putting a drop after drop of attention on myself with the intention of harmonizing relationships, transforming those personality traits little by little, and in my experience, they do begin to change. As we get stronger, we can confront those big emotional items or situations. So that's the principle. I hope that made sense. Sometimes we need extra support, so I would say definitely get support from friends or from other people that are going through the same situation. Also, I would say be courageous and try and do whatever you have to do to take care of yourself while you're learning. And this is the other reason to start small. If I have a big emotionally charged situation, I. And I go immediately into the emotionally charged situation. Do I have enough power to handle it? Do I have enough self-respect? Do I have enough skill? Do I have enough understanding of my own needs and my own abilities to manage this? Or is it gonna maybe cause some more pain? Or are the other people gonna take advantage like this student was saying that her friends were kind of making fun of her, so there could be, that can happen. So in those cases, I would say it's more important to take care of yourself and start small, start slow, start in areas of your life where it's not as emotionally charged and build up your power. Little by little and I'm, I can share my experiences that I have been able to transform all of those big emotional items. They don't go away right away, but as I get stronger and I'm able to see them more clearly, and I'm taking care of myself, it begins to balance itself out and what happens as the result. I'm taking care of myself and the situation is changing. Eventually it comes to some kind of agreement where the situation now is, feels natural for me and I'm taking care of myself, and that's kind of what we want. We want to be able to feel natural and open and self-expressed in every area of our life. So we'll do a moment of reflection. So take a moment and just look, is there some area of your life that is highly emotionally charged and that you would like to maybe transform? And as you're looking, see if there you can, you can identify what is the quality that you would need or one of them in order to make a difference in that area. Is it self care? Is it boundaries? Is it, maybe you need to be away from that person, or maybe you need to stop doing a behavior? What is it that you need? To help transform that situation. It may not transform it completely, but just identify one thing that you can see would change it. And now take a look. Is there anywhere else in your life where you have the same issue but it's less, it's not as important. Can I practice with a friend? Can I practice with the coworkers? See if you can practice in other areas. So I'll leave it there. I hope that gave you something to think about. I hope it made sense and I can say that it has definitely made a difference in my life. And the principle, another piece of the principle is that when you make one change to yourself, it changes the whole system. So it doesn't matter if you're starting with the big one, you're still giving yourself the solution. If you're doing it in small areas, you're building up the power that you need, so you are becoming the solution. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
