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Repeating Patterns and How to Break Free

Repeating Patterns

How would you describe your family’s relationship with money?

At a workshop on “Creating Consciously” the speaker, Dr. Michael Ryce, offered this bit of wisdom. He said there are 4 steps to achieving an abundant life:

1. Never Enough
2. Day Late, $ Short
3. Just Enough
4. Abundance

Each one of these steps includes a cluster of behaviors and thought patterns which are often passed from one generation to the next.

Which one of these money relationships to you feel you are living now? Which one are your parents, grandparents and other family members living? This is not about how much someone has but how they feel about it. There are plenty of millionaires who don’t feel abundant but rather live in constant fear of losing their money and not having enough.

Story: Intergenerational Patterns, when someone takes what’s yours – against your will

They are widening the street in front of my house. They (the Department of Transportation) didn’t ask if I want to sell them a piece of my yard. They told me that they are going to take it. In all fairness, they have to pay for it, but other than that, I have very little say about what, when, and how it all happens.

During a recent conversation with my mother I mentioned what is happening with the road-widening project. Then my jaw dropped when she told me her story: Sometime after my birth and before age four, we lived next to a forest. During that time, and I was totally unaware of it until this recent conversation, the authorities decided that they needed to create a fire free zone between the forest and people’s houses. Instead of cutting down some trees on the edge of the forest, they took a piece of my parent’s land to create a strip of land with sand and gravel as a buffer strip. — What an incredible coincidence! I happen to live across the street from a Forest Preserve, and the road-widening project is happening on my side of the street.

Does that pattern go back further? I am not aware of any similar stories in my family going further back. But I do know that my grandparents and great-grandparents (living in Germany) lost their homes due to bombing during World War II. No one asked them if they wanted their homes turned into smoldering piles of rubble.

History repeats itself until the lessons are learned. I wonder if I had known about my parents’ experience, if I would have bought a different house eleven years ago. Awareness is certainly the first step. Apparently the locals all knew that this part of the road was eventually going to get widened. It never occurred to me to even ask questions about the road or to notice that it was already four lanes further north and further south of us.

Interestingly enough, that early childhood time in my life was associated with a whole lot of trauma: abuse, hunger and neglect. Just like the Pavlov’s dog experiment, I have unrelated emotions associated with someone taking a piece of land against my will. So now I get to go through that experience consciously and also heal the trauma that was unconsciously associated with that time and event.

Call to Action and Why This Matters:

History repeats itself until the lessons are learned. Awareness is the first step to change.

People have repeating patterns in their families all the time. The most obvious are patterns like alcoholism, drugs, or abuse, even educational or financial achievement. Often the negative patterns are also associated with secrecy and cover up. It takes conscious effort and help from the outside to shift the patterns and break out of the repeating cycles.

Do you have repeating patterns you would like to shift? Are there things going on in your life that seem to keep repeating – over and over? May be you sometimes feel that “everyone is out to get you”? Are you in a repeating pattern with money that you’d like to shift?

Here are my suggestions for a different outcome to a repeating pattern:
1. Become aware of a repeating pattern that you don’t want in your life. Start small. Most new runners don’t choose a marathon for their first race. Start small.
2. Become very clear what is happening.
3. Figure out how you are contributing to the pattern. What’s the role you play to attract this to you?
4. Learn from the experts on how to do this differently.
5. Try something different.
6. If you feel resistant or defeated before even getting started, explore why you are stuck and how to get unstuck.
7. To overcome the WHY of being stuck, create a bigger WHY to change. Often an addict has to hit bottom before they can heal. The condition, in their mind, becomes worse than the required healing work and anticipated withdrawal symptoms.
8. Have a new way of dealing with the problem that was solved by your old pattern. For example, if you drank to relax after a stressful day, you will need another way of relaxing and reducing stress, which does not create a new undesirable pattern.


The book, “Why is this happening to me … Again?” by Dr. Michael Ryce can be purchased or downloaded for free on his website
Dr. Ryce has also created a 20 minute guided meditation, “Wellness Through Stillness” which I have found very helpful.

Stress Release:
In the September 2011 teleconference call entitled “Uncovering hidden blocks” by Jack Canfield, he leads his audience through a couple of stress relief tools: EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, also called Tapping) and the Sedona Method. For more information go to

The Sedona Method is a very effective way to permanently melt away your stress response to stressors in your life. For more information, go to

N.E.T. Neuro Emotional Technique. A way to let go of and heal responses to emotional triggers and restore wellness. For more information and to find a practitioner in your area, go to

Contact me:


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