As I’ve outed myself as an AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) in last week’s post, I’m going to continue to tell you about it.
One of the things that I’ve enjoyed about growing my lego collection over the last five months, is that in a time when everything has been changing so quickly, they have provided a very clear structure. When I get a new set, it comes bagged and labelled with the order I will need to use the bricks and there are clear step by step instructions. If I take my time and remain patient, I am guaranteed a result that will look like the picture on the box. That feels like a very rare and precious feeling over the last few months.
After a while of admiring my creations and feeling pleased with myself for the achievement, it was suggested to me that now I had made the sets, I could dismantle them and build something else with the bricks. This suggestion was met with immediate resistance, and my response was a very clear, no way. At one time, that would have been the end of the conversation, but now I know the value of stepping outside of my comfort zone. These days, when I have a very strong reaction to something (positive or negative) I try to spend some time reflecting on it so I can understand where it comes from. Sometimes, this doesn’t change my response, but often it opens an internal dialogue which can lead to new understandings and possibilities.
In this instance, what I uncovered was that I was stuck in the idea of how these pieces of lego ‘should’ be put together. This is something that we often do with ourselves, worrying about how we should look, what we should do, which things should be important to us, the list can go on. I have learnt that any sentence that contains a ‘should’ is very rarely based on my own beliefs or desires but is often someone else’s words that have got stuck in my head. These words can be things we have been told or learnt when we were younger and often we never question them. They can be implicit rules that we have always followed, but unless we question them, they may be stopping us from being who we truly are.
What ‘shoulds’ would you like to let go of?
If you’d like to spend some time being curious about where ‘shoulds’ come from and how they are stopping you from living the life you want, please get in touch for a free initial consultation.
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