Habits

Exploring flower essences
for recognizing and changing automatic
patterns of behavior that block conscious evolution

Habits are routine patterns of behavior that tend to occur without conscious awareness. We sometimes don’t see them because we are not self-aware as we are doing routine tasks. Some established habits can be supportive to our highest good, while others may limit us or take us in a direction that is less than optimal.

Establishing habits takes some will power, but it sometimes is a process of sliding into them. Breaking habits requires a blend of self-analysis, intention, and the application of will to carry through with the process.

What are some of the habits that serve you well? Brushing your teeth or braking your car to avoid hitting something are both habits that help you. They both don’t usually require you to think about it, you just do them. They are automatic actions you have become used to doing that give good results.

Most of us also have habits that are less then beneficial to our well-being, such as procrastination, overspending, or nail-biting. You can think of a few that don’t serve you well. These are all habits of which you are conscious, or easily come to awareness when you contemplate the idea of habits.

Yet there are also habits that are unconscious, or hidden from your awareness. These may be actions that you take without fully realizing it, and without seeing their consequences. In some cases, you might be aware of the consequences, but cannot see the habitual thinking or actions that provoked them.

How can we become aware of habits that are less than supportive to our evolution in consciousness? If we are not aware of something, how can we bring it into the light of clear seeing? Once we see a habit, how can we change the pattern to match our intention? Following is an exploration of flower essences that can help.

Recognizing a Habit

One of my favorite flower essences for recognizing habits is Tarbush. Habits are not only actions that you take, but also ways you perceive life and the world. This essence helps bring into consciousness deeply imprinted assumptions, beliefs, or actions that are limiting your growth. Tarbush helps you be aware of something that has been playing within you, but you couldn’t see it before. It helps thoughts and assumptions that form habits arise from the unconscious like a submarine arising from the depths of the ocean. Once you see them, you know they have been affecting you, yet until now, have been invisible.

Tarbush also helps when you are conscious of a pattern but hold a secret belief that you can’t change it because this is just the way that you are. If you have a stubborn streak within you that believes that change is for others, this is the essence to effect meaningful transformation.

When a Habit Becomes an Addiction

Some habits are addictive in nature. They may have begun as a habitual behavior but have evolved into an uncontrollable urge. Harmonizing Addictive Patterns Formula is the essence to use when a habit has taken on a seeming life of its own.

The formula helps you become aware of the habit and evaluate how much power it seems to have over you. It supports you in knowing that if the habit has become uncontrollable, you need support from a power greater than your mind to overcome it. Harmonizing Addictive Patterns Formula supports you through all stages required for an addictive habit to be consciously changed.

Inherited Habits

Some habits are ancestral in nature. They may be learned from your family of origin or other societal groupings. Ancestral Patterns Formula can help you become aware of this type of habit. Once aware, it supports you in deciding if you want to keep the habit or not, then brings you help in changing the pattern.

Being Hard on Yourself Hinders Change

Sometimes you are aware of a habit but tend to give in to it anyway. Whitethorn is a flower essence that can make a difference here. Instead of making things difficult for yourself as you endeavor to change a habit, this essence helps you be more gentle with yourself. It helps you mind move to a fresh and new attitude, just what you need to change an entrenched pattern that underlies a habit.

The Habit of Holding Old Perspectives

Perspective is important when you attempt to change a habit. Have you considered that how you perceive other people can be a habit? Once you know a characteristic response of someone, don’t you sometimes have a habit of expecting the same behavior or reaction to repeat again from them? By holding on to habitual perceptions of others, we do not allow them to change or grow.

Pink Pond Lily can help us change this habit. It facilitates a cleansing of old patterns of seeing and perceiving others, bringing a freshness of perception, which allows others to grow and evolve in your eyes. It gives you the opportunity to meet others with fresh expectation rather than worn-out expectation.

The same applies for your perception of yourself, too.

Sometimes we become satisfied with ourselves and want to remain exactly the same. We clutch onto who we think we are and don’t allow the continual process of inner growth and evolution. It’s as if we say to ourselves, ‘OK, I made it this far, through all sorts of transformational experiences and I’m happy here.’ We attach our feeling of safety to that which is static. Pink Pond Lily can help us see when we need to gently let go and allow for new ways of seeing ourselves. This gently soothing flower essence is a wonderful support for cleansing patterns of seeing and perceiving that keep us stuck. It brings us an inner honesty and self-acceptance so that we can see ourselves and the world with new eyes.

The Habit of Intensity

One habit that you might not consider is one of living life through your emotions so intensely that you lose contact with your physical body. Some people have the habit of experiencing everything that happens with excessive zeal. Its as if they don’t feel alive unless they are having a dramatic moment. You might have learned that this is the way to get others’ attention, that if you are not emoting intensely, others don’t pay attention. This is a habit that might begin as a result of dysfunctional family patterns from childhood, but it can also be the result of having your moon in a fire sign astrologically, such as Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius.

There is nothing wrong about experiencing life to its fullest, feeling feelings to their depths, and expressing yourself fully. But if your tendency to do so continually burns out the people around you, or you find yourself ungrounded much of the time, it might be wise to consider if this is a habit that could use tempering.

Melon Loco is nature’s answer to the tendency of constant emotional overzealousness. Melon Loco steps down the intensity of an emotion so that you retain conscious connection to your physical body. If you continually focus so much on intense emotions, it as if your emotional body expands and become more important, or bigger, than your physical body. You lose touch with your physical needs, such as the need to eat, sleep or even move your body. Melon Loco brings emotional peace and a better balance between your emotional life and the rest of you.

Actualizing the Change

Sometimes you see your undesirable habit, know the actions you need to take to change it, but something is missing from activating the change. Something indefinable keeps you from taking the action that you know is required. Hedgehog Cactus is excellent in this case as it sparks the connection between the desire to change and the actualization of it.

Selecting the Most Appropriate Flower Essences

Not every flower essence mentioned above will be appropriate for every person’s specific needs. Usually, careful self-examination can clearly show you which of the above flower essences are most appropriate for your particular needs.

Though you can use more than one flower essence together, you probably will not need to use all of the ones mentioned here. After contemplating your relationship to this issue, select the flower essences that apply for you, or use an intuitive method to select among them. (For more information on how to do this, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.) A general guideline is to use four drops at a time, four times a day, in water. However, it is fine to follow your intuition and use them as often as you like. Most people find that they tend to use them more often in the beginning and less often towards the end of the cycle. Unless otherwise indicated, a cycle is usually two to four weeks. [more]

For information on how to clearly evaluate the effects of the essences you have used, see The Art & Technique of Using Flower Essences.

List of the Flower Essences Mentioned in this Article

Ancestral Patterns Formula

for conscious recognitions of habits that are ancestral in nature

Harmonizing Addictive Patterns Formula

for detaching from habits that are addictive in nature

Hedgehog Cactus

when you know what you need to do to change a habit, but cannot take the actions necessary to change

Melon Loco

for the habit of focusing so much attention and intensity on you emotions that you lose touch with the physical body and other aspects of life

Pink Pond Lily

holding on to past images of self or of others; stuck in old ways of perceiving

Tarbush

helps bring awareness of limiting thoughts and beliefs that form habits, stubborn resistance to change some aspect of yourself due to a resignation or conviction that “this is just that way it is and always will be”

succumbing to old patterns, habits or situations even though you recognize that they are no longer appropriate