It’s a problem as old as the hills but one we are yet to find a shortcut solution to. Why do we find it hard to modify, override or eliminate some behaviours and revert back to destructive patterns that may be proving unsupportive in reaching our goals?
Responses ranging from ‘I’m an all or nothing person’, to ‘I just like doing it’ proves there are enormous variabilities between individuals, with no one shoe fits all answer. What is required is an understanding of the complexities of human behaviour.
Mentor and founder of Neurophysics Therapy, Ken Ware continues to study the relationship the human nervous system has with its environment (plus I shared my neurophysics healing story). He puts forth that “If you revert away from time to time from what you know would be the better version of yourself, then don’t despair. The changing of behaviour is a very dynamic process – which requires simultaneous perception, action and cognition to begin to process changes to your behavioural landscape”.
Humans are creatures of habit and we are designed to maintain our patterns of behaviour. If one incident occurs out of the blue, it reinforces how sensitively dependent we are on our day running smoothly.
Ken continues “Your whole behavioural (neural) landscape needs to be perturbed and shuffled around, not just select bits and pieces. You cannot force a rose open, so you need to start with a white sheet of paper and forget all the misgivings of the past and move forward slowly one step at a time.”
We think we feel, we act is a representation of the idea we have control and authority over energy in motion at some scale. What we refer to as an emotion, is the experience of energy moving through the body. This is commonly felt as sensations of contraction such as tension or expansion such as calm. Some emotions are a lot more addictive than others, based upon their level of importance to our survival, or neurochemical response we have to them.
For perturbing the system, with the goal of overcoming stubborn habitual patterns Ken recommends
How To Override Negative Self- Sabotaging Behaviours.
- Good posture – Good posture in the human being is the result of evolution and gravity. If we need to change and consolidate our behaviours, we need to focus on posture 24/7. ‘Posture rules’ so posture up and you will feel much more in charge of turning down the heat during the emergence of early-stage negative behaviours. It is easier – less energy expensive for us to maintain existing patterns of behaviour than it is to adopt new ones.
- Put on a happy face – When counterproductive feelings and thoughts arise, simply put a smile on your face with the aha knowledge that this is simply your system doing what it knows. Maintain a low key ‘Ninja’ mode to not give the destructive notion famousness and ‘the other thing’ will soon pass. The neural network that houses that action becomes weaker each time and enables your more preferred behaviours to become more famous and consolidated.
- Let go of guilt – Make a firm commitment to never ever feel guilty or shameful about anything you do again. Guilt/shame are powerfully addictive and activate the brain’s reward centre. In a similar manner to how a person may become an adrenaline junkie, in a bizarre twist of fate a person can be a guilt/shame junkie. You have to be onto yourself at the beginning of any possible episode that may lead to a guilt/shame experience to avoid damage to yourself and self-worth that occurs along the way to getting that fix.
Promise yourself that if for some reason you choose to have a piece of cake, or blow off a training session, that you will NOT feel guilt/shame after. You will probably find over time that the appeal of eating the cake or missing a workout will fade and disarm the primary motivator.
There is a level of conscious thought until new, more desirable patterns of behaviours take a stronghold but totally worth the effort to become the best version of yourself.
