Patterns

Have you ever noticed that no matter how well things are going, some part of your mind is already bracing for the fall? The carpet, as KC says, is always about to be pulled out from under you. Relationships, work, your car, your morning commute — if your mind has been patterned deeply enough, it will find a sign of trouble in almost anything. Understanding this pattern is one of the most important steps you can take toward inner freedom.

What the Pattern Looks Like

It shows up in small ways. You are at work and things are going well — then one small thing goes wrong and your mind immediately says, “I knew it. I was feeling too good. Here it comes.” You are in a relationship, it is growing, it feels right — and instead of enjoying it, a voice in you starts scanning for the betrayal. Something goes wrong with your car on a day when you were already feeling optimistic, and now your whole day is ruined, not because of the car, but because your mind used it as evidence that the good was not going to last.

We look for signs in our lives that indicate whether our day is going to go good or bad. We start predicting based on those signs, and we back the prediction with emotion. That is when the pattern becomes self-fulfilling.

False Dependency on Things Going Wrong

There is a painful irony in this pattern. At a certain point, if it goes deep enough, you can become more comfortable with things going wrong than with things going well. Goodness begins to feel dangerous. You cannot handle it because the moment things get good, you start wondering when it will be taken away — and the wondering produces so much anxiety that the good feeling is destroyed before anything actually changes.

That is a false dependency, as Bill Wilson wrote about. Not just on substances or behaviors, but on a pattern of expectation. You have become, in a strange way, falsely dependent on things going wrong. And that is a place you can get out of — one day at a time, one awareness at a time.

Everything Can Be Transformed Into an Asset

The way of life KC teaches dismantles this pattern at its root. Because in a life lived with God, there is no more wrong, no more permanently bad. Everything can be transcended into an asset. Even the painful losses — the deaths, the betrayals, the failures — eventually get to the place where you can say: “It was what it was. What am I going to do with it now?”

This does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means trusting that no experience is wasted when you bring it to God. When you stop looking for signs that things are going to fall apart, and start looking for what God is doing in what is already in front of you, the whole lens of your life changes.

The New Pattern: Expectation of Good

When you catch yourself looking for the carpet to be removed, say: “Not this time. I cannot wait for the next great thing to happen according to the grace of God in my life.” In God’s world, when you do not think it can get any better — if you stay with God and trust — it keeps getting better. That is the new pattern worth building. Expectation of good. Anticipation of growth. Confidence that what is coming is better than what was.