Recently, while going through my old journal entries, I noticed something that stopped me. I'd landed on entries from around the same date last year, and I was shocked. I was worried about the same things then that I'm worried about now. A few situations had changed. Most had stayed exactly as they were.
That was a wake-up call.
So I asked myself a simple question: why did that happen? Why, a year later, with more experience and more clarity, was I still carrying the same thoughts, the same emotions, the same unresolved problems?
The answer turned out to be simple — and it landed harder than I expected. The version of me had changed. The root problem hadn't.
Here's what it came down to:
Nobody put me in a cage. I built it myself.
A cage that stopped me from taking action, from thinking differently, from breaking the pattern in my thoughts, my emotions, my choices. I was the one keeping myself there — both the one who built it and the one living inside it.
And honestly, that's not unique to me. It's not unique to anyone. Every person carries dozens of thoughts a day, and research shows most of them circle back to the same three things: health, relationships, money. Our lives largely revolve around these three areas — which means the patterns we get stuck in usually do too.
Once I saw it clearly, something shifted. I know now that breaking a pattern is difficult — but not impossible. And until I do the work to break it, I'll stay stuck in that same cage, complaining about the same things, for however long I let it continue.
That moment was an eye-opener. So here's what I'd ask you to sit with too: reflect on your own past experiences, your own repeating situations. Are you in a cage? Or is the cage inside you? Because once you can tell the difference, you already have what you need to start walking out of it.
Reflection prompt: What's one thing you were worried about a year ago that you're still worried about today? What would it look like to actually name the pattern — instead of just living inside it?