Ready To Release An Old Pattern? I'm An Intuitive & These 8 Tips Will Help

We all have old patterns operating in our lives that, while comfortable and familiar, may not be serving us. We may not even be consciously aware of these patterns, and then a person, event, or circumstance makes us look at this pattern with new clarity. A deep need to shift the old pattern can then arise within us. 

It's often all about how we frame something to ourselves! When people become ready to release an old pattern that's not serving them, it's usually because that pattern has wreaked havoc in their lives and brought something to a crisis point.

You may find yourself feeling frustrated and forcefully trying to "fix" this issue. The solution may seem deceptively straightforward, like simply being more disciplined. Yet, when you instead think of healing this pattern, that word changes your energy and outlook, inspiring you to handle yourself and your life with tender loving care.

There is a sacred quality to mentoring—both acting as a guide to someone else and seeking guidance for yourself. Mentors have expert skills and lived experience around a pattern you'd like to release and heal. A key part of successfully releasing an old pattern is having a new pattern to replace it with, which a mentor can teach you.

When you become aware of an old pattern you need or want to release, it's common to hunker down with your inner hermit and spend more quality time alone. The hermit is a spiritual archetype that can come online when you need to go inward, examining your patterns and their origins, motivations, and consequences.

Whenever you're changing and healing, it's very normal to retreat, creating extra space to tend to yourself as opposed to focusing outward on others and the world. Retreating is a healthy spiritual tradition, yet if you ever feel isolated, reach out to others or schedule time to be out in the world.

Going back to this being a journey, there can be stops and starts, and/or big forward movement followed by backsliding, when you're releasing old patterns. The image of a spiral is an oft-used spiritual concept because life doesn't always move along in a straight line, as we would like to believe. It's more complex than that, which we realize when an old wound is triggered or when a positive past aspect of our life appears again in the present to get our attention.

Through work by scholars like Joseph Campbell on archetypes that appear across cultures in mythology and storytelling, the threshold guardian or gatekeeper was identified. While this character—who appears when the hero is on the threshold of an important breakthrough or up-leveling, or entering a new phase or world—is common in fiction; it's also a spiritual concept that can show up in your real life.

It could be the well-meaning friend who tries to talk you out of moving to a new town or the boss who offers you a raise just when you've decided to finally quit and become an entrepreneur. When you're about to make a significant commitment to a new pattern and someone offers you reasons or resources to turn back, consult your intuition to discern whether this is a helpful spiritual redirection—or a threshold guardian testing your resolve.

Whenever you're working to release an old pattern, it can be inspiring to examine how a new pattern you're trying to adopt and implement could be more spiritually nourishing.

If you have an old pattern of binge shopping and racking up unnecessary debt, the new pattern of consuming less might usher in the spiritual awakening that taking only what you need is a way to live more harmoniously with the planet. Or that minimalism is actually spiritually decadent because when there's less, you can be fully present with and savor what's there.

We often hear the phrase "act as if" in spiritual circles. If you're typically impatient and have realized this leads to self-sabotaging actions and decisions, react instead as a very patient person would. When calling about picking up your car from the shop and you're told yet again it will be another week, take a beat and remind yourself you're reacting as if you were a patient person. Make a game out of it.

A very patient person might calmly inquire as to the nature of the holdup, while keeping their breathing and tone of voice steady. If there's a good or understandable reason for the delay, the patient person might put the issue in perspective, look on the positive side, and focus their attention elsewhere.

Old patterns that no longer serve us can be born from our old traumas or insecurities. If you tend to over-give at work and in your personal relationships, it could be the inner child who was abandoned by a parent or caregiver at a young age now feeling the need to bend over backward to avoid rejection as an adult.

If you've realized this old pattern leaves you exhausted and resentful, have compassion for the part of yourself that was trying to avoid being hurt through over-giving. That desire for love and security, and the impulse to protect yourself, is a beautiful thing.