The Decision to Change

So we come to the point where life is no longer working for us.  We are serious about making a real change. We have decided we want to lose weight, we want a loving relationship, we want a better job, we want more money, we want better health, and more.

We charge out and buy the books, create New Year’s resolutions, get the personal trainer, create goals, write down ideas, take the trainings and more. We are filled with motivation, inspiration and new found conviction. Why is it that within a week or two most of us are right back where we started.

We have to look at life as a number of decisions, every day we are deciding, we decide who to believe, what truth to take on, what job to take, what relationship we say yes/no to, how we act, who we like, what food to eat and even who we chose to be. We have to decide how important and how badly we want the change we are longing for then we need to break it down and piece by piece we need to replace bad habits and negative emotions/experiences with new behavioural patterns.

A habit is created by extensive repetition of behaviour until the behaviour imprints on our unconscious mind, which is the 80% of us that is out of our awareness but is running our behaviours and holds our habits.  The behaviour is trigged by some sort of cue and often there is (at least in forming the habit) a reward for the behaviour. Once the pattern is imprinted we run it so that whenever we have the cue the behaviour starts outside of our consciousness.  Remember that the mind only knows what it has survived so far,  change is scary as change creates new input and new thought processes in the brain which it has not yet learned to deal with.  The mind wants to return to stability and that is the known habit we want to get rid of.  It will do anything to have us not change and it does not always work in our favour. The key is to change many small things bit by bit and form new habits to move us in the direction we want to go.

In order to create change we need to decide what change is necessary, what steps we will take, what goals to follow, what will keep us on track and decide to start NOW. 

Facing change is not easy, especially without the right skills and tools and depending on the size of the change you are committing to. It can be extremely beneficial to not go it alone but to have some support on your journey. As Einstein said, you cannot change a problem with the same mind that created it.