Remaking The Bed You Lie In

When a particular phrase has been around awhile, we tend to give it alot of weight. Consider the common idiom, “You’ve made your bed, now you must lie in it.”

It conveys the notion that I’ve created a certain set of results and now I’m stuck with it. But that only holds up in a particular context. Last week we started a conversation about living from the context of cause vs. the context of effect in our lives. If I am living from the context of effect, then yes, I am stuck with the results I’ve created, the bed I’ve made. But if I choose to live from the context of cause—choosing to be the cause in my life—then if I don’t like the bed I’ve made, guess what? I can make it again and again and again!

When I’m living at cause, the life I consciously create by choice is independent of the life I’ve unconsciously created so far by default. Saying, “I can’t have a great life because of my past,” is like a city saying, “We can’t build a football stadium because we already have an ice rink.” They are truly independent of each other because they are different contexts altogether. And the same is true for the contexts in our lives.

Context is always created. It is created consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, on purpose or by default. And the life I choose to create from this day forward is literally a different matter than what I have created so far.

But that’s not how most of us see our lives. No, we take the approach of, “This is the bed I’ve made, and now I have to lie in it.”   Notice how this shows up in your own life.  It may look like:

• I hate my job, but it’s the only one I could find, so I’ll keep showing up and doing enough to not get fired.
• I fell out of love with my wife years ago, but I’m stuck in this marriage, so I’ll go through the motions or maybe I’ll get my kicks elsewhere on the side.
• I’m never gonna lose these extra pounds, been overweight for years, so why bother exercising?
• I can’t afford that training, so I’ll have to pass on my dreams of becoming  a musician.  Who am I to be great at something anyway?

And we just lie down in silent resignation; prisoners to the beds we ourselves have made.

What if lying in the bed you already made is NOT your only option? What if you could remake your bed instead? Get up!  And just make it again!  This is only and always possible in the context of being at cause in your life. Notice I’m not telling you to break your commitments. I’m not telling you to quit your job, divorce your wife, go on a crash diet or rack up a bunch of debt. But what if you created a new job in your job, a new marriage in your marriage, a new body in your body and new finances in your finances? What if you shift into consciously being at cause for what you want in every area of your life–relationships, career, health and spirituality–rather than resigning yourself to being stuck with what you have caused so far?

Yes, the results you’ve got so far, have been generated by you.  Another way to say it is that the decisions you’ve made and the actions you have taken in your life, even in relationship to things outside your control, have brought you to where you are today. Look how effectively you have created your life without intending to. Imagine what you could do if you were intentional with it!

So, being at cause in your life, how would you like to remake that bed of yours today?

Be Great!

Becky