Break the Cycle: Recognizing Toxic Patterns in Life

But let's talk about how we're going to stop this cycle. First thing is identify the pattern. There's toxicity in all of this. When we crave chaos, that's toxic. I'm going to call that out for you. So identify what are these unhealthy patterns, these toxic patterns that you're experiencing in communication, the toxic pattern of even unhealthy physical relationship. The toxic pattern of I'm inviting chaos so I don't have to pay attention to other parts of my life. And if that's what you identify, I want you to hold onto that and think about the why.

Why do I do that? Why do I want to distract myself? The second way to stop the chaos, I want you to ask yourself, how are you creating new patterns of communication? So consider this. If you are in a toxic cycle of unhealthy dynamics, unhealthy communication, how can you change that? How can you do something new? So if you typically yell at someone, how can you quiet yourself? How can you create a new pattern of communication where instead of getting upset and shutting down, you actually verbalize what's bothering you?

So sometimes when we shut down, that creates toxicity and this chaos in the relationship because maybe our partner or the other person involved wants to communicate with us, but we are blocking that communication. We are putting up a stop sign like, hey, I'm not available. I don't want to talk to you. And that creates chaos in a toxic cycle, when partners want to break through that and we just don't allow it. So change that pattern for yourself. Challenge yourself to actually have a healthy dialogue about what's bothering you.

And the last tip. Now, I really want you to sit with this one, okay? I want you to ask yourself, how comfortable are you with silence? How often do we take a pause? How often do we slow ourselves down? And how comfortable are we with slowing down and being still? Now, that is a challenge for many people, especially with how busy our lives are. We don't know how to sit still anymore. And we will go and pay for retreats to, you know, maybe go to a monastery or going out even to another country, just to have time of silence.

But I want you to challenge yourself to see how can you create an environment in your home, in your workspace, in your car, wherever you can spend time alone in silence. Not with music, not with the YouTube playing in the background. I just really want you. I'm going to challenge you to think, how can I sit in silence? Sometimes that silence is scary. And that can feel chaotic. And so we might run from that. Remember that distraction I talked about with chaos? Sometimes we run from the uncomfortable feeling of just being still.

But we need it. Sometimes we need to be still. We need to be silent so we can really hear what's going on. So we can hear our own voice. So we can hear what really hurts. And not just hear it, but feel it. So that's your challenge today.