This is Anne with your Coaching on the Go.

We are at the fifth way to support you in shifting decade-old rules and beliefs…actually decades.

They could go all the way back and often do to between in vitro at age seven.

That’s where everything is said to be formed.

Before you’re even born you start creating these paradigms and structures.

Today, number five is about something that I mentioned in the last Coaching on the Go.

I suggested that when you talk about a rule or a structure, you can start to think about why that was in place, what the purpose of it was, and how it worked for you.

I like to do this for a couple of different reasons.

If I can figure out ways that the rule made sense when it was applied or the belief made sense when I created it from the story or the situation that I experienced, it can give me the feeling of appreciation for myself:

-that little three-year-old or that five-year-old came up with this structure to survive or to make the best of something

-this large family had a rule about not wasting resources that I took too far

-that was an important rule and structure for the family to be successful that I was raised in

-bringing empathy to the rule, structure, guideline, or paradigm that you have because it was created for a reason.

It was either created to protect and serve.

It was created on the outside of you for some reason.

What I’m saying is that when you have an internal rule that you created from a story, let’s say you experienced pain or something wonderful happened, and you created a structure so you could repeat or not repeat that scenario, it made sense to you when you were a child.

You made it up internally.

It was yours or maybe you had a rule given to you from outside of yourself.

Either way, when you look at these, it’s really helpful to step into someone else’s shoes for the situation that was occurring, someone who maybe has an opposing belief to you or they did something for a specific reason, but you don’t agree with it.

Try to understand the reasons and the emotions behind the rules and the structures that you are coming up against now.

The empathy that you bring to that situation can create forgiveness, compassion, and peacefulness.

A lot of people, including me before I started doing this work, harbor resentment for rules and structures and the way that they were raised by parents.

Often, there’s no understanding of the variables that these parents were experiencing that caused them to behave in a certain way, create certain rules, and have you obey certain structures.

When you go back as an adult, you have all these sensibilities and look at the evolution of how that rule or structure was created, bring that empathy.

You can have appreciation and forgiveness for yourself and for the other people involved, and even forgive or understand that it was a good rule for that time, or it was important or effective.

Now you have the opportunity to either tweak it to have it work for you, get rid of it, or keep it if it’s still working.

It’s my understanding that if you are still dealing with it and there is some pain and it pops up, it’s not working right now.

Today’s call to action is about bringing empathy.

When you look at the rules and go back in time to look at their origins, you can see that each of these could be a week on its own, but I’m giving them a day.

I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed.

If it serves you, just investigate one of your rules right now.

Don’t overwhelm yourself.

If you can shift one rule in the next couple of weeks.

If it even spills into the third week, that’s great.

All right.

Sending you love, as always.