We’ve all been there. The hamster wheel. It turns endlessly, going nowhere, and taking us nowhere with it. Here’s the good news: there’s a way off. When you find yourself on the hamster wheel of circumstances or you come to the realization that you are in a cycle, an experience that isn’t working, there’s a way out of it.
You already know this, because even when we don’t see it in ourselves, we’re really good at seeing it in other people. There’s the girlfriend who ends up in the same relationship over and over again or the employee who consistently makes the same error. It’s pretty easy to spot from the outside, but not so easy to do from the inside.
Here is where we go wrong: instead of getting curious about it, we tend to place blame or ask the wrong questions – the futile, frustrated ones like “Why did this happen to me?” Patterns can change, however, when we allow ourselves a moment to shift perspective so we can gain a better understanding of the situation we are in. In these moments, we can see our experiences from a wider view and it opens the opportunity to see the source, what caused the pattern to begin and then repeat. If we allow ourselves the presence to see that, to see the source, we have the opportunity to shift out of the cycle, to release that pattern, to learn the lesson, and to no longer have to create the experience. It’s a never ending loop we tend to get caught in, sometimes, most times, not realizing we’re caught in it. But if we get curious enough, go back far enough, , we’ll start to see the patterns we’ve created.
The only way to get out of any cycle is to ask the right questions, to trust the curiosity, to dive in, find the source, pull the thread, and then to know the lesson that’s supposed to be learned. Again, we see this in other people – we see them do the same things over and over and we ask ourselves “When are they going to learn?” Perhaps our ability to so easily see it in someone else indicates that we may have something to look at in ourselves.
This getting stuck is not just a mental exercise. It’s an actual physical block that keeps us from acting. As soon as you learn the lesson, you no longer have to create the experience. Then, if you no longer have to create the experience, what else do you get to create? There’s a whole world of creating to do for each of us as soon as we leave the useless hamster wheel behind.
