You are Not a Formula
You, the life you are, cannot truly live inside the confines of a formula.
Formulas can help us understand why things are the way they are. A formula takes something and breaks it down into its component pieces, so that we can understand how a number of independent parts come together to create an outcome.
Yet, any formula that becomes a lifestyle will limit Life.
Life becomes formulaic not fluid.
It’s true, a recipe for bread is a formula but there are many variables that can affect a loaf. In making a loaf of bread, the oven, altitude, ingredients, human attention and more affect the outcome. In truth, no two loaves of bread are alike.
We searched Personal growth formulas on google and it spit out over two million references. That’s quite a few formulas to learn and grow by.
Formula’s like The Enneagram or Human Design can have great value in terms of assisting someone’s personal growth. However, if one frames their perception of themselves or others exclusively, constantly through one of those lenses, they and everyone around them will become stuck inside a frame missing the wholeness of life.
It is critically important to know when to drop a formula and be present to what is. Sometimes applying a formula to a circumstance takes away from what is really going on. We can become blinded by formula and miss the powerful truth unfolding itself in front of us or within us.
We like to apply formulas to life and we think the formula is life. The formula is dead. It’s only meant as a tool for understanding, not to live by.
Formulas for personal growth were always designed as stepping stones to take us from one state of being toward another. If we keep living in the same formula of perception, we will create a repeat pattern of life resulting in frustration maintaining the presence of old wounds.
So, we invite you have some fun with these questions-
- How many formulas are you living by?
- Are they serving you?
- Is it time to surrender your formulas and trust the un-formulaic miraculous within you to create your life.
We’d love to hear from you. Please share below.
In love
David and Susan
Hi you two,
Fabulous blog! Thanks!
I used to think I needed to BE the formula. I used it as a rebellious label to say I was “nothing like those” who grew up in my home town. In high school I never wanted to be “pigeon holed”. I didn’t judge others, but I pigeon-holed myself with my formulas. I have now accepted me, including those parts.
If something went “wrong” in my life, I would find or make up a formula to live by. Then, when I didn’t want to or couldn’t do it anymore, I thought something was wrong that I could not perservere. So I would panic and look for the next piece of “solid ground” to land on (the next formula). It was constant jumping like from stone to stone and sometimes acquaintance to acquaintance trying their formulas.
For years I wondered why I was so particular and why there were some people I did not let in that were really incredible. Well, they didn’t fit in my “formulaic” lifestyle and I didn’t know how to relate to them from that space. I wasn’t “shy”, I didn’t know how to bridge. “How would that work? Will I be pulled out of my place? Then what? Too scary, so forget it.”
I had held myself, my family, spouse, children and friends hostage (not that I really can) to my prison-making ideas. Where was my discernment? My wisdom? Where was room for them?
I missed some of who they are and new emerging parts of myself, my truth and even trusting, because it didn’t fit in my own self-made box!
The formulas I had experienced now feel like the melding pot of my wisdom.
Wow! didn’t know all of that was there!
Thank you Susan and David!
Love you!
Mignon
Dear David and Susan:
What a beautiful post! Thank you so much.
My mouth is watering. Could be the “amrita.” Could be the gorgeous loaves of bread. Are they not one and the same? 🙂
“A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.” (From Story Water by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks)
Big hugs and love.
I loved those comments.. a wonderful description of “formula”.
Very provocative!
Mucho amor…Lola