Use Your Agency to Change

As human beings, we have the power to choose our responses in every situation. Unlike animals (that have innate tendencies which they alone cannot choose to change), we have the powerful opportunity to exercise agency--our free will to choose our responses.  Agency is the ability to think, reason, and change. Yet, our most natural response is to react according to instinct and prior conditioning, as though we are animals. Often we feel powerless to change our instinctive responses. Remember, such beliefs and subsequent thoughts are simply untrue. We have the power to change, and when we gain more awareness and intend to heal and progress, we do!

Human responses are primarily based on conditioning. Where this conditioning begins is fascinating. Research tells us that most of our emotional blocks and limiting beliefs--including our inborn (genetic) tendencies--originate from our experience with our family of origin, including our experience in the womb and at birth. This research helps us understand that subconscious blocks (emotions and fears that prevent us from healing) come from a few possibilities. First, they may originate from emotional memories of our time in gestation and childhood. Second, they can result from any trauma or fear we experienced during the birthing process or in our childhood experiences. And third, they may be inherited genetically, which means we essentially brought them into the world with us.  

 When dealing with emotional blocks try using doTERRA’s essential oil Myrrh.  Myrrh can help support the healing process if someone experienced trauma and or separation at birth. 

In 2005, Biological Psychology published a study conducted by Dr. Peter Hurd indicating that a man's index finger length relative to his ring finger length can predict how inclined that man is to be physically aggressive.

These statistics validate our need to know about our conditioned and instinctual tendencies. When we are ignorant of them or we simply don't want to change our behavior or inherited beliefs, we limit our access to the mental agency we've been given. That's like running a computer system on a default setting. If we don't choose another program, we often run our lives according to our programmed responses.  To change, we must use our agency to learn new ways to do things and make new choices. 

For this weeks personal development challenge, determine what instinctual programming may be preventing you from experiencing joy or getting what you want and need most. Refer to Healing Your Family History for help. This book is meant to help readers distinguish family patterns that limit our potential and provide us with increased power to make new choices.

It's a fact that we can’t change our behavior by running the same information through our brain that we had when we created the behavior. We can only change when we have new information. Agency belongs to us, and we use this power as we become aware, learning more about ourselves and becoming aware of our ability to change.

Warmly,

Rebecca Hintze, M.Sc.