16 Mar How To Go From Surviving to Thriving (In Survival Mode You May Not Have Realised There Is An Alternative)

How do we go from Surviving life to Thriving in Life? It’s such an important question because some of us who are simply ‘surviving’ don’t actually realise that there is an alternative. In fact if we survive another day, week, month, year even, we are filled with gratitude and deep appreciation because our level of expectation is so low, the level of exposure to what is possible for us so minimal that surviving moment to moment is in fact the limit of our life expectancy.

Thriving, to live a life which we could actually consider as thriving does not necessarily mean you have to be super rich. Let’s just get that established. You could have all the wealth in the world and still be living in survival mode or by popular standards poor and have a grasp on life which enables you to thrive. Money is not the barometer we are measuring thriving by. 

Invariably, for some of us to thrive, resolving our economic situation is going to be necessary but there is a lot more to it than that. 

‘So, what is this all about then?’ – ‘I’m glad you asked!’, from our mothers womb we emerged into this life extremely vulnerable. Hotel Womb had everything we needed for food, clothes and shelter and as long as there was not too much turbulence occurring outside our haven we likely were pretty contented in that space until one day a whole heap of turbulence began and with great distress and wailing our mothers released us from their portal to enter into the world we all inhabit now.

During our years of utter dependency we relied solely on the good intentions, love, hospitality and caring of our care givers. However, our care givers had also emerged under similar circumstances, albeit several years before. And depending upon their experiences and how much of a grasp they had on thriving will depend in large part what kind of survival system our fledgling minds formulated to survive their care. 

It all sounds so quaint doesn’t it; parenting, babies and toddlers, even raising children and young people. But many of us have to look back in later life and evaluate the impact our upbringing had upon our psychology. 

It comes down in large part to the people we had to become to survive our environment. 

We have to ask ourselves what was required of us? What role expectations did we unconsciously fulfil? How did we comport ourselves to ensure, ‘boats weren’t rocked’ and ‘status quo’s’ were upheld. 

Or was it necessary to our survival to become a rebel, to fight always for what we needed to survive, perhaps over other voices, like in the case of being raised amidst multiple siblings. Or perhaps our rebellion was required simply because we had selfish or ignorant parents for whichever reason. 

The issue is our ‘survival mindset’ being formed at such an early stage of our development becomes in many ways who we know ourselves to be. And as we get older unless something happens to interrupt the established patterns our survival mechanism continues to operate and we continue to react to the world based upon a system cultivated not for thriving but for surviving. 

Do you see why this has got nothing to do with money now? Thriving begins when we recognise the patterns which usually by this point may have established ways of behaving and showing up which may be causing us issues in our relationships, or in our work or another area of our lives. 

But if we are prepared to really deal with the cause as opposed to the surficial effect we can begin to form a conscious thought-out and adult response to the scenarios life presents us and we can begin on the road of Thrival living and experience the immense possibilities that are available to us when we liberate ourselves from automatic reactionary responses which were cultivated from an immature state before we had the autonomy and capacity to benefit from the array of choices and opportunities which life presents to us.