Raising the Bar

I have found personally and professionally that people are largely creatures of habit who will continue to engage in consistent routines of thought, behavior, and feelings until we are in so much pain that we can no longer continue with the old routine. This seems to be a large part of the human learning curve.  It is as if we are asleep at the wheel of our lives and do not wake up until we crash the car.  Fortunately most of the casualties of living an unconscious life are not fatal only painful.  When we have finally have had enough of the familiar and safe suffering of repetition, we become ready to make changes that push us out of our comfort zone.  We wake up and now are in a position to be intentional about our life choices.  A bar raising question that can help us to wake up without crashing the car is, “What kind of life and relationships do I want my child(ren) to have and am I living that example?”  It does not matter whether you have children or not to ask this question.  I found every time I have asked this question to a client whether they had children or not that the type of decent, ethical, respectful, loving, balanced lives that they described were of higher standard than what they were living and helped to create a vision worth working toward.