Starting over

[LiberalElite]

http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/starting-over

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As a meditation teacher, I'm often solicited for advice by students who are seeking to change their lives in some way. They may want to alter an aspect of their behavior or their emotional life, or improve their relations with others. They almost always report that they have tried to change but fail time and again. I listen to each person's story and tailor my response appropriately, but the essence of my response is almost always the same: If you really want to change your life and are having difficulty doing so, then you need to master the practice of starting over. More than any mantra, resolution, therapy, or behavioral self-manipulation, this is the practice that creates results.

The living proof of the effectiveness of the practice of starting over is 38-year-old Taryn, a student in the Sunday evening meditation class I teach. Taryn is a successful midlevel manager in a fast-growing company who makes a positive first impression, but her career has been stalled and she has a long history of personal angst. When Taryn first started attending class six years ago, she was close to losing her ability to function effectively in her high-pressure job. She had difficulty with trust in friendships, she got into adversarial relationships at work with both peers and bosses, and her romantic life had been one disaster after another. A therapist might say that a hypercritical, affection-withholding, competitive mother and a nice but weak and nonprotecting father were the source of Taryn's problems. In fact, three different therapists had told her just that. But despite knowing why she had trust and communication issues, Taryn continued to suffer, which is ultimately what brought her to meditation.
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