Imagine you are back to your 6 year old self. You are just learning how to ride a bike. You have been practicing with training wheels for a long time but today the training wheels have come off. Now you have to work at balancing on the bike all by yourself. What happens when you fall off balance and off your bike? What does your body naturally gravitate towards to sooth itself? Do you stay there and cry? Do you call out for mom and dad? Do you shed a tear, dust yourself off and get back on your bike? Do you laugh it off and get back on your bike and try again? What would you say is your survival mechanism?
Internally we have a fight or flight mechanism that is physiologically and genetically ingrained in us to mange stressful events as our fear response. We learn our survival mechanism from our environment and our parents to teach us how to manage stress.
When there are times of stress, unbalance, worry, anxiety, depression, etc.. in your life, are you aware of what your survival mechanism is?
My survival mechanism is to get up, cry a bit then get back on my bike and keep going. Sometimes I laugh it off and get back up on my bike and keep going with more drive to pedal with more conscious awareness. Depends how hard I fall. I have a spice inside me that wants to get back up on my bike and keep going even harder and further on my adventure.
Lately I have been focusing hard on my goals and my self care. My survival mechanism is to push harder towards my goals to achieve them and to encompass my life with love (the people around me I love and who love me, self love and the things I am passionate about). I tend to focus on improving myself outwardly but also spiritually and emotionally. Yoga creates that nice balance of inner peace and outer peace and treating yourself to a nice pedicure, a hair change and some retail therapy also helps too. Mainly, my inner drive comes from learning, tuning into my new wisdom, using that new wisdom to be stronger, more motivated and focused towards the things/ideas that light up my soul and give me purpose.
Stefanie Baranowski 