Awareness is the Starting Point

The obvious problem isn’t usually the problem. 

Not in my world anyway. 

And that was an incredibly hard pill for me to swallow.

I’ve always been good at mapping patterns on others because I’ve been an observer for the majority of my life. 

Having substantial hearing loss made me a pro at reading the room- noticing energy, noticing the patterns that often emerged. 

It made the world feel less stressful for me externally. 

Internally was a different story. 

Internally, I felt lost- a lot. 

It was all a delicate dance of masking to fit in and pretty soon the entire world felt like I was playing a game that I didn’t even want to be playing. 

But I couldn’t figure out how to end the game, or change it – or really, anything. 

It felt like I would never learn all the rules and there would always be more popping up. 

More ways to fail. 

More ways to upset the other players. 

More ways to have less fun than I was currently having. 

It got to the point where I didn’t really care what had to happen to stop it. 

I just wanted to quit playing. 

If this was what life is- I honestly didn’t want it. 

But then I started doing “the work”. 

The inside work. 

And what I really started doing was slowing down enough to map my own patterns. 

I had the information. 

I knew so many different sides, scenarios, and my understanding of human behavior- of emotions, ran deep. 

I realized that I didn’t need to keep looking for information. 

I needed to apply it. 

To myself. 

But this strange thing happened. 

I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it- but I couldn’t quite figure out how to reroute it into something else. 

Everything started feeling a new kind of fake. 

Like I was in a world that made sense… but I still didn’t know what to do… 

How could that be? 

How could I know everything that I knew, and still not know how to change my own life? 

How do I apply what I know to truly get unstuck from this way of being, of feeling? 

That’s when I realized something that changed everything. 

Awareness isn’t the finish line.

It’s the starting point. 

Seeing the pattern didn’t change my life. 

Responding differently to it did. 

It wasn’t until I got into an argument with my partner. 

I don’t want to sugarcoat it- in my brain, he was being a real dick and I didn’t like it one bit. 

I didn’t like his tone. 

I didn’t like the words he was using. 

I didn’t like the way he was throwing his emotions at me. 

I didn’t like that he wasn’t taking responsibility for his own actions. 

I was really tired of being here with him. 

I felt like this was going to be my life for the rest of it if we stayed together. 

I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want to be in this part of our relationship anymore. 

It shined a light on something I hadn’t been able to see clearly before.

This is exactly how I felt about myself. 

I didn’t want certain parts of my relationship with myself anymore… 

I didn’t want to leave- but I didn’t want to live like this anymore either. 

Then I started seeing it everywhere. 

This split feeling of knowing what I didn’t want, and knowing what I did want- but no idea how to bridge the gap was showing up in my relationship with 

Myself

My partner and other relationships

Money 

Food

My body 

Work 

Literally everywhere. 

I couldn’t unsee it. 

No wonder I felt so lost. 

No wonder I felt so overwhelmed.

I started feeling like if I couldn’t start completely over- brand new- it wouldn’t matter. 

I had gotten too far off track. 

I would never be where I wanted in this lifetime. 

That feels so silly to say now- but at the time, I genuinely felt that all the way through. 

It was too overwhelming at the moment for me to see anything clearly. 

But I did what I do. 

I started mapping my patterns. 

I gave myself time for the alchemy to form.

And then I started trying new experiments from this new place of understanding.

Because I realized something. 

“How do I apply what I know?” 

Wasn’t the question anymore. 

The question became:

“What can I try differently this time?”

That question changed everything. 

When I found myself in that same argument again with my partner, I didn’t automatically allow my brain to sarcastically say:

 “Great. Here we are again.”

Instead I was aware that I wanted to say that. 

Instead I was aware of the overwhelm that I was creating. 

I took a breath. 

I tried a new route. 

I reminded myself that he was my best friend. 

That he was never trying to hurt me. 

I took another breath and reminded myself of something. 

I have the power to make this personal. 

I have the power to choose. 

My response. 

My emotions. 

The trajectory of this conversation. 

I can ask questions. 

I can say honest things kindly. 

I can put boundaries in place and keep them. 

I can guide this conversation and I can guide it to a healthy place. 

I took a breath and listened. 

Not to the attack. 

I listened to what was hurting him. 

What was scaring him. 

What he was struggling with. 

And then we talked. 

We had an honest, real conversation about what was really happening. 

And it worked. 

And the more often we communicated like that- the more consistent our relationship became. 

The more I wanted to be in this very relationship. 

The more love we accessed. 

The more truth. 

The more trust. 

The more ourselves we became. 

I was shocked at how quickly we started to progress, and not just in our relationship but in all the areas that we were previously struggling in. 

We were mapping our patterns everywhere. 

We were learning new ways to respond.

Living finally felt like a game I not only wanted to play, but I also wanted to fine tune and design. 

I was excited about being alive. 

I was excited about where this would take me. 

I felt like I was home within. 

Looking back, my relationship wasn’t the obvious problem. 

It was the doorway. 

The real work wasn’t changing my partner. 

It was changing the way I responded to myself. 

Reflection – Pattern Mapping: 

• What situation in your life keeps repeating? 
• What response do you usually have in that situation?
• What’s one small experiment you could try the next time this pattern appears?
• What did you learn about yourself from imaging that different response? 

Watch the conversation that inspired the reflection here: