Breaking the Loop: Ending Repetitive Patterns

In this episode of the Inside OUT Podcast, Jojo discusses the importance of breaking negative patterns in our lives. She emphasizes that while we often express a desire for change, true transformation requires us to make different choices. Jojo shares personal experiences of repetitive cycles in relationships and highlights the necessity of setting boundaries and being proactive rather than reactive. The conversation encourages listeners to take control of their destinies by recognizing patterns, setting boundaries, and embracing challenges as opportunities for growth.

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Transcript

Jojo (00:07.086)
to the Inside Out Podcast. I'm your host JoJo where we will navigate the mess together that is mental, emotional and spiritual. Let's get into it.

Jojo (00:26.574)
Hi guys, welcome back to Inside Out. So happy you're joining me today. I want to talk about breaking and negative patterns and how we can do that. And I feel like we all have this repetitive pattern that keeps showing up in different areas of our life, but it's the same kind of cycle. And we're like, my God, I'm so over it. I want to break this. I want to change this. And we keep saying, I want to change this. I want to change this. But we actually don't get to change it if we keep...

choosing the same thing. And the only way to actually transform this is by choosing differently, which we all know. But it's so hard when we're in that to really choose differently. It's like a circle. When you look at a circle, every curve is exactly the same. It's infinite and it's continuous and it just keeps going. Unless you veer off, you're never going to not have a circle. Do we see the correlation here? Circles are our patterns. I have a repetitive pattern in my life where I'm trying to change a dynamic.

in myself and I keep having someone coming in and trying to perpetuate the same exact situation. had a friendship with someone for several years and it would be really good and then it would get kind of bad and then be good again and then get bad and then there'd be like some sort of fight or falling out and then we would have a conversation and then it would be okay again.

And then would just keep happening kind of on a loop in repeat consistently. And anytime this person and I would get into a fight, I would be so anxious and it would really hurt me and nothing ever really changed. I would get super reactive. They would get avoidant. I would say things I didn't mean. They would say things they didn't mean. It would just be this perpetual.

thing that would happen. And I got to a place recently in my life where I was like, this is never going to change. It's like, when is the other shoe going to drop? It's like, we can be really good right now, but when are we going to have the next fight? What is the next thing that I'm going to say that's going to send it over the edge or what is going to be the breaking point? And inevitably we had another, let's call it an episode where the blowout happened and the same exact cycle was on repeat for

Jojo (02:47.842)
let's say round four. And I got to a place in myself where I was like, I'm not doing this for the rest of my life. I might love this person. I might really want this person in my life. But if I don't do something different, how am I ever going to change? I'm always going to be in a cycle of anxiety, of sadness, of negativity. There's always going to be something waiting to break the camel's back. And I got to a point where I was like, I'm not doing this anymore.

because it's breaking my heart and it's causing a lot of stress and unnecessary BS on both ends that frankly we both could do without. So at what cost, right?

you might feel like, I'm the bad guy if I'm choosing different. Okay. At the cost of the rest of your life, being this exact same cycle with this person, I mean, this can be a family member. This can be your friend. This can be a partner. This can be anything. But if you don't choose different, are you just going to be the effect of this repetitive situation? I would like to say no.

We have to be the catalysts to veer off the circle. We have to be the ones to make that change. And it's not easy. It sucks. It hurts. And they come back and they want to fix it or have a conversation or I'm sorry, I miss you the same thing, but that's just going to start the process over, isn't it? It's hard to just like cut someone off, especially if they're a family member or a sibling. But for the sake of this situation,

I'll bring it back to my myself. If I don't change my response, I'm just going to be in the same never ending loop. So with my situation, I stopped it and I had to stop it by saying, look, we can't keep doing this. Nothing's changing. And sometimes it takes a breaking point or a veer off for something to shift. And I don't know the future, but what I do know is that adjusting myself now in the present,

Jojo (04:51.498)
is going to inevitably change the future because I'm not going to go in this same exact circle. And there is going to be a change. And even when you set boundaries with someone and you say, look, this is where I'm at, they're going to cross it. But even setting boundaries with someone for them to cross, you can always turn around and say, my gosh, they just keep crossing my boundaries. Like they never listen. They don't respect me. Or we can flip that and be like, well, are you letting them cross your boundaries? If they call you every week to complain about something and you're like,

Okay, I have 10 minutes, but they always take 20 minutes and you allow them to take 20 minutes. They're not crossing your boundaries. They're just doing exactly what they've always done. You are the one that's letting them because you're not saying, okay, it's been 10 minutes. I'm so sorry. have to go. And hanging up the phone. Change starts with us. Breaking the circle starts with us breaking our patterns and our cycles and taking challenging situations and changing them. It's all us. And it's not easy to do this. It is rep.

competitive work. And when we keep asking for, my God, I need to change, I need to change. What is the universe going to keep bringing us? The exact story that we can choose to change. I keep asking, my gosh, I want to transform. I want to change this. I want to grow. I want to evolve. I want to make this different. So what does the universe keep bringing me? My problem on a silver platter. The text of the person being like, I miss you. Let's get dinner.

Ding, ding, ding, different.

Which by the way is very hard because all I want to do because I care about this person is be like, yeah, let's resolve this. Let's change it. But again, at what cost? The same exact negative cycle or repetitive cycle or anxiety ridden relationship, the stress of when the other shoe's going to drop. If you're trying to set boundaries with someone and you're like, look, I only have this amount of time. The universe is going to give you the opportunity to set that boundary by someone trying to take advantage of your time.

Jojo (06:52.376)
so that you have to set the boundary. And implementing that in yourself is so hard and it takes work. It's not like, okay, I want to change. So wave a magic wand and boom, transformed. No, you have to be met with resistance. If you want to get stronger, you're going to go into the gym and you're going to start with a five pound weight, which might feel heavy. And then you're going to go to 10 and you go to 15, you're to 20. And then all of a sudden you're picking up 60 pounds, but you're not going to get there.

unless you start somewhere. And if you're not getting stronger and you're not being met with resistance, how do you get stronger? You can't just move air. You can't bicep curl air. You've got to put something heavy in your hand and move it. It's the difference between being reactive and proactive. Reactive is the victim mentality. It's that mindset of this always happens to me. I'm always like late. I'm always, you know, being stressed out by this person. Okay. You're always late. Set your alarm clock.

30 minutes earlier. You're always being stressed out by this person. Make a boundary. Sorry, I don't have time for you after this point. Sorry, we're not going to be talking about this anymore. We're so ready to put ourselves on the back burner for someone else because we don't want to be seen as difficult or problematic or rigid. We want to be liked. We want to people please. We want to be helpful. We want to be nice. Again, at what cost?

at the cost of our own sanity, our own lives and our mental health. Being proactive is saying, I can do something about this. This is an opportunity for me to change. This is an opportunity for me to choose differently. It's so easy to blame. It's so easy to be like, it's their fault. Flip the script. It's not their fault. It's our fault. It's our fault for putting up with this. It's our fault for not choosing different.

If we want to be more patient or tolerant or empathetic in our lives, we really want to change that and grow that attribute of ourselves. What's going to show up? A traffic jam, someone talking badly about us behind our back, a child throwing a temper tantrum on you. These are all areas in which we can enhance the attribute of patience. Okay, now I'm in a traffic jam. Okay, I need to be patient. I need to not rush. I need to take my time. I need to be careful. I need to look both ways.

Jojo (09:15.394)
I need to slow down. We're so impatient. We want to get there so fast. my gosh, traffic. Beep, beep, beep. No, breathe. You want to be more patient? That's why this is showing up in your life. That's why you're stuck in traffic. So you can breathe through the impatience so you can learn patience. You don't learn patience by just being like, la dee da, everything's good. No, you got to be met with a challenge. You don't become more tolerant without your child screaming in the middle of a grocery store, throwing a temper tantrum in the cart by him just sitting on the floor at home playing with Legos. You build...

intolerance by dealing with that head on and not getting reactive or getting angry or being intolerant and getting really worked up about the situation. You don't build empathy by having someone talk negatively about you and then turning around and being like, well, they do this and they do that and they're backstabbing, whatever. You build empathy by saying, okay, that's their opinion. That doesn't change the way the reality is. I'm not going to be reactive. Maybe they've had a bad day. Maybe they need to just

have an outlet and this is not a reflection of who I am or what I bring to the table. This is literally just their process. That's empathy. That's proactiveness. Instead of being reactive to the world around us and doing the same thing we've always done, it's saying, okay, I see this. I see this pattern. I see this repetitive cycle. I see this circle. I'm going to break it. I'm going to veer off. I'm going to choose differently in spite of the challenge in my face.

I want to set a boundary. I want to say no thank you to the dinner. I want to step away and step into a new destiny because if you're still in that loop, in that circle, it's infinite. It's always the same. There's no room for difference. And it's so hard to do this in the middle of it. So start with something small. Write a list of the things in your life that you want to do differently. Maybe it's you're always late. Okay. So just say your alarm 30 minutes earlier because the more that you work that muscle of change and

not doing the same thing with the small stuff, the easier it's gonna be with the bigger stuff. The easier it's gonna be when that person reaches out to you that triggers you or that person that keeps crossing your boundaries or that person that's talking negatively about you behind your back. So get that list and write down the patterns that you wanna break in your life. So let's apply this to the mess, the mental, emotional and spiritual. So the patterns that we have in our lives, I would advise writing them down or the things that like,

Jojo (11:40.268)
don't serve us, whether that's impatience or not having firm enough boundaries, make a list of what those things are. And then emotionally understanding what the proactive way to deal with that is, how to own your destiny and not really let this be up to the person who's triggering that. Taking control and taking the keys back to your own destiny. And spiritually veering off the circle, choosing different.

figuring out how and where these points of contention on the circle can be changed, how we don't have to choose the same exact ending, how we really can pick different, choose ourselves. And spiritually also the aspect of not blaming the other person, because we have to also realize that people are showing up for us in our lives to really transform our reality and aspects of how we are.

who we are and where we can grow and evolve. I would even argue that everything in your life is reflecting back at you areas in which you can be more mindful, more empathetic, more patient, more caring, more compassionate, even if it's just for yourself, even if it's just saying, yo, the way you treat me isn't good, no thank you. But spiritually getting really in touch with what that is and how you can be more aligned and break the circle.

and break the cycles and the patterns of repeat and choose a new reality. Because our thoughts turn into our actions and our actions shape our lives. But we have the full control and autonomy on how we react to them. So don't be reactive, be proactive. So thank you so much for tuning in this week. Don't forget to follow on Instagram at underscore inside out dot podcast, share this episode with a friend or someone you think that will enjoy it. Maybe you need to send this to the person that you are.

needing to change boundaries with. Maybe you need to send this to your mom. Maybe you need to send this to your boss. Just kidding, don't send this to your boss. And subscribe on Spotify, Rate Review, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I will see you next week. Go make some changes, guys. Bye.