I once had a client say to me, “I want you to teach me how to re-wire old habits that are making me miserable.”
I agreed, reluctantly.“Just how miserable are these habits making you?”“Very.”“How dedicated are you to this process of breaking and rebuilding?”“Completely.”
Turned out she wasn't very committed at all. What she hoped for was for me to wave my magic wand and totally restructure her hard wired circuitry. I don't blame her however, because truth be told, we are all victims of the same societal hypnosis: take a pill and you’ll be all better.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way - not in emotional health, nor in our physical health for that matter. Conditioning ourselves to take on a new habit isn’t all that challenging if you have real desire for it in you. But to break old, systemic ones are an entirely different ball game. The destruction of this kind of pattern demands serious commitment. And it also requires something else: COURAGE.
Why courage? Because we’re attached to anything that’s been in our life for a long time. Even if logically and rationally we hate it, it’s familiar, and familiarity is addictive. Speaking of wiring, we just aren’t wired to accept change, which is why we have to ruthlessly practice non attachment and letting go if we’re to have any shot of overcoming our addiction to certainty.
And “ruthless” is exactly how I would continue to describe it. Even if you don't feel confident that you can do it, I assure you that you can, but not without commitment and courage. When you have a high level of both, you will become capable, and once you’ve proven your capability, you’ll feel confident.
Why else do you need both radical commitment and courage?
One simple answer: (repeated 3 times for impact)
Breaking a pattern is not comfortable. Breaking a pattern is not comfortable.Breaking a pattern is not comfortable.
The more integrated the pattern, the more uncomfortable it’s going to be when you face it head on. So please don’t expect it to be like taking a magic pill. Brace yourself for the discomfort and know this truth: When you’re willing to endure short term pain for long term pleasure, you will get more of what you want out of life. Period.
What eats away at our souls is living with long term pain with bouts of short term pleasure. Rip the bandaid off. Don't peel it. Jump into the cold ass water, don't dip your toes. Do the task, don't procrastinate.
Look the short term pain dead in the eye, and cooperate. What’s on the other side is so much better.
Here are the fundamental steps essential to re-wiring old stuff:
AWARENESS: Wake-up time.Our habits are mostly unconscious. In fact, because we human beings are creatures of habit, you would be amazed how many things you do habitually that you’re not even aware of. But waking up to the behaviors that are not serving you - the ones that are preventing you from experiencing a meaningful life are the ones to be thoroughly examined.The first step of change is awareness. You must admit you do something that MUST change.
INSIGHT and HONESTY: Time to get real with yourself. Once you recognize this unfavorable pattern, then you must get truthful and detailed about the impact it has on your life and how it controls you. Truthful because it’s easy to fool ourselves. Detailed because the more evidence you have that supports the negative force of the pattern, the more likely you’re going to break it. How painful is it really? What is it costing you emotionally, mentally, physically and perhaps monetarily? In other words, get clear about how it not only impacts YOUR life, but the people you love as well. A rather tough pill to swallow is that our lives are not just for us. Trust me, if it’s a pattern that’s making you unhappy, it’s making someone you love unhappy as well. Our behavior and moods impacts others, even if indirectly. *note: The more a pattern costs you, the more likely you’re going to tackle it. If you merely don't “like” it, you probably will continue to tolerate it, unless you are part of the teeny percentage of people who refuse to live with their tolerating.
BUILD THE EMOTION:Pain (aka discomfort, fear, worry, doubt, etc) is the ultimate human motivator. We will do almost ANYTHING to prevent it, so we all have our nifty strategies to make sure we DO prevent it as much as possible. We love change if we are in control. But let’s face it, the other kind of change -the kind we didn't ask for is painful. But they aren’t called “growing pains” for nothing. I don't know about you, but I’ve had a lot of growth from being pushed so far past the edge that I had no choice BUT TO change. But here’s the trick: you can leverage your natural born fear of suffering through associating big distress to NOT changing. That’s why the previous step was to get super duper clear about what this pattern is costing you on every single level. You can get as logical as you want with this process, but logic will only get you so far. What makes a person leave a relationship? EMOTION. What makes someone say YES to a relationship? EMOTION, What makes a person say NO to anything? EMOTION. Emotion is the power source of all decisions, especially the big ones. Think back to when you’ve made big decisions in your life: I guarantee what precipitated the final YES or NO, was not logic. That precise moment of decision was charged with an emotional state: You attached a pleasure emotion to one option, and a pain emotion to the other option. That's why if you build up enough pain emotion about NOT changing, and associate enough pleasure emotions TO changing, you have the most important ingredient in the re-wire soup.
DECIDE: The latin root of the word decision means to cut off and kill. When you make a decision, you have killed all the other options. Contextually then, ‘to decide’ is to draw the line in the sand and say, “ENOUGH”. What gets you to that moment of enough???EMOTION. It’s not logic. Logic may help you initially, such as in weighing the pros and cons, but in case you haven't noticed, that doesn't really do much - not for the big stuff. In fact, can you remember a time when using logic actually kept you in Indecision?? Especially for those of you reading who are very logical, I would say that while I admit it’s an incredible skill, know that logic isn’t the driving force behind deciding to change something in your life that isn't working. Now consider the physiological state of decisiveness. Especially when you’ve been grappling with it. Once you decide, your body is doing something very specific. It’s certain. And being certain lends itself to a feeling of confidence, and your body on confidence feels a very specific way. Remember, this isn't about when you fake decide something and then ruminate about whether or not you made the wrong decision. This is when you kill off the other option, and in this case the other option is not changing/growing/evolving.
PRACTICE: You can break a pattern with a snap of your fingers. Saying yes, saying no, making that call, refusing that bite, taking that bite all takes a second, roughly. That's why it APPEARS as though some people just “changed overnight.” But no one changes over night. What we don't see is the long road it took for that person to finally come to that moment of decision to finally do the opposite of what they had been doing. Make sense? Hope so…I have another client who is breaking free of her fears with men. Her boundaries have been too porous, and it’s been painful for her. One day she said “no” to something that she normally would have said yes to. It was hard and uncomfortable and densely rich with unfamiliarity. But she did it. In that moment she broke a long standing systemic pattern. Is she changed forever? Well, in a way, yes. But she, just like all of us, will have to practice it in order for it to become a sturdy neural pathway. If you have an unhealthy relationship with practice; meaning, you believe that all things should come easily or else you’re a failure and it’s not worth it, you will suffer. End of story. Do not confuse this with discipline. Discipline doesn't work, long term. For example: My longest relationship to date OTHER than the one I have with myself is with Yoga. I’ve mostly practiced it several times a week for the past 18 years. I recognize it as a practice, and therefore, I not only accept that practice is part of mastery, but I see the VALUE of practice as being the ONLY path to mastery. (There’s so much data to support this, a good read is Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers.) One could say that all dedicated yogis are disciplined, and I wouldn't necessarily argue with that. However, I can assure you discipline is not what gets a yogi onto her mat. Emotion does. Even if she isn't exactly in the mood at times to do it, she’s completely and utterly in love with it. In love with the feeling and emotions she experiences after the challenge, the probing, the letting go, the holding on.*You have to practice breaking a habit and building up a new one as long as you have to, and what motivates you is simply wanting it badly enough: You’ve drawn the line in the sand. You’re sick and tired of the wrong content in your body and you want to download the right content. You want to take the leap into the short term pain of doing something fucking hard because you’ve had the INSIGHT that what is on the other side of that is long term pleasure.
That isn't discipline. It’s hardcore desire.
Will you need help with some of it? I know I do. This is why I became a coach. Because I wanted to help people build serious grit when they're up against themselves. Not just for the sake of resiliency, but for the sake of grace.“For grace comes to the heart when it realizes what it is made of and what it has risen from.” Mark Nepo
Both the journey and the destination are irrelevant. It’s who you become along the way that will change you. Forever.Here's to shedding old, tired skin.All my love,Jillian
