I saw this post recently and at first I laughed, thinking of how true it was for “other people” you know since I am all evolved and prancing around in pristine perfection.
Then, I thought, how many times in my life have I missed that I have all the ingredients, everything I need, but I’m wanting my request to be met fully formed: already mixed, baked, cooled and iced.
And isn’t that like most of us?
We are always looking outside for the finished product and we forget to turn inside.
Do I have everything I need already within me?
Do I have the ingredients but maybe I am not putting them together in the best recipe?

When we look closely, and with an open mind, we often find we have tremendous stamina, perseverance and fortitude. We are just applying it to the wrong things. For instance, we say:
I can’t change
This is too hard
It always turns out like this
This will never work
and so on …
These statements we believe and say with tremendous perseverance, stamina and fortitude.

See, my friend, we often have all we need it’s just being put to work for the less-productive team on occasion.

So let’s go back and try this all again.
You say you want a cake (that cake can be weight loss, a better job etc.).

Do you have all the ingredients but you are using them all up on making meatloaf?
This is one of those things that you read here and it makes total sense but when we go to deconstructing some of these deeply ingrained ideas in our heads —  that feel so true— we will forget so you’ll need to remind yourself over and over.

I have found that the following concept is a fantastic reminder when it comes to our ingredient distribution.

“You’re not stuck. You’re just committed to certain patterns of behavior because they helped you in the past. Now those behaviors have become more harmful than helpful. The reason why you can’t move forward is because you keep applying an old formula to a new level in your life. Change the formula to get a different result.” ~Emily Maroutian

The validity and reliability of this quote continues to astound me. I have always felt I understood it but it keeps coming back up in new ways in my life and showing me more truth each go ’round, more truth about myself. The ways I hold myself stuck when I think I am unable to change something when the truth is I am, at times, unwilling because I am committed to using my “ingredients” for other things.

Question everything. Even if you “believe” you have a logical reason for doing it. Question if it’s more out of habit than fact. How could those ingredients go to a new recipe? How can I make the cake with what I have?

Resistance is frequently a sure clue that we may have some misappropriated ingredients.
Go slow and remember these habits, however misguided some may be, are built from experience, built from a need to protect ourselves from something.
And when we introduce a new idea, anything from new water drinking habit, to exercise program, to what time I go to bed, our system is a little bit wary because new is almost always a “threat” to our committed pattern of behavior.

Take that in.
And if you really sit with that idea you’ll start to realize every single time you didn’t follow a plan the way you hoped, the way you pinky-swear promised you would , maybe it wasn’t a lack of willpower, it was that we used up our ingredients on something else first. Then you can have compassion and clarity and begin again.

Trust, you already have the oil, eggs, butter and a pan. Go make your cake.

Sunshine & Sarcasm,
Lowi & G