Hey, looks like it's your first visit on ZenHappens, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, this way you'll always be upto date. Thanks for visiting!

A few days ago, I was sitting comfortably in a nice Brazilian type café in my hometown. It was one of these days where I just needed to be alone, yet, surrounded by people that I didn’t know. A way to experience a different context, a different mind frame, another perspective on myself. Suddenly, I had a flash, a tiny glimpse of wisdom, taking the form of a laugh. I was deliberately laughing at myself (a useful skill that took me a while to master believe me). The realization I had was concerning some nasty little patterns and behaviours that I already was aware I had but I had never been able to see them operating until yesterday.

Since I am back from the tour, I decided to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Including a cleaner diet, getting back fully into my yoga and meditation. That involves waking up early and also going to bed earlier in my case. This is definitely not what I was doing. I found myself being irresistibly attracted by the convenience store near my place, buying a small amount of grain fermented refreshments, consuming them while staying up late and putting myself in a low productive creative context in which I was fooling around with some photoshop brushes. Hmm, not exactly the idea I had for myself for a healthier lifestyle. That’s where the laugh came from.

Basically, all I wanted to do are these things that made me feel good when I thought of them. There is a reason why I put this last sentence in bold, it’s related to our neurology and the ways it operates. If you want to understand how and why you behave in such and such ways, you need to look at what is going on under your hat.

The Infamous Thought Pattern

So what is the problem with this sentence?

“these things that made me feel good when I thought of them”

Well, in essence, there is nothing wrong with this. Thinking about the things we want to do is quite healthy. The shift occurs when you have been thinking about these things, whatever they are, for prolonged periods of time; for weeks, months or years. You see, the wonderful machine that is our brain likes to take the easiest route possible to achieve a goal. If it can fire the same neurones to get you to accomplish a simple task like brushing your teeth, it will. It wont try to create new way of doing it if you keep brushing your teeth the same way, using the same hand, at the same speed, following the same routine every time. This is good as it permits us to learn things and free up some space to do other things at the same time like thinking about the things that make us feel good.

So what is wrong? Well, our brain not only likes shortcuts, it also likes, even more, to hold on to them. Once a pattern as been created and well ingrained in our daily actions or thoughts, trying to change them will prove to be a little bit of a challenge. The older the pattern and the more it has been used, the harder it will be to change it. So when you focus on something repeatedly (focus in this case is the combination of thought and emotion) like I did when I was thinking about waking up early, doing my yoga and meditation practice and all the nice physical and emotional benefits that it would bring, you are actually creating a thought pattern in your brain. This thought pattern, once well established in your train of thoughts, will fix itself and try to stay there.

Please bear with me, I’m getting there…

Keep Wanting And You Will Never Get

In my example, I had been thinking this very same thought for a long period of time. I actually never got to put it in practice for more than a week and I kept blaming it on my musician lifestyle that keeps me up late and prevents me from establishing a steady routine. That is only a lame excuse. This thought was strongly fixed into my mind and this same mind was not ready to give up on it. If I were to achieve my goal and do all the things I wanted to do, I would not want them anymore because I would have them. This is the critical point in all of this. If you are going to remember only this little bit from this article, this should be it. If you focus on wanting to hard and for too long, your subconscious will work really hard at keeping you wanting. This is where the self-destructive patterns enter in the game. This is why I stacked up on beer, stayed up late, avoiding the things that I really wanted in order to preserve this feeling of wanting. Fortunately there is a simple and very powerful way to interrupt these thought patterns and in the process, get rid of the behaviours that interfere with your goals.

Want it but don’t sweat it

If wanting too much leads to not getting, then does not wanting lead to having? Wouldn’t that suck big time? Of course, it’s not as simple and lame as that. As I say often, it’s all about balance. That seems to really work like a charm for me. Every time I find myself in a situation like this one, I will try to apply balance to it. In the case of wanting, the best attitude to adopt in my opinion is to:

• Put the intention out
• Establish some actions to take
• Let it all go

Putting the intention out will signal your subconscious to seek for ways to achieve your goal. Establishing an action plan, well, that’s easy, it makes you act on it. Letting go or detaching yourself from your goal means that you do want it but you are not attached with the outcome. Since you are not attached to your goal, you will also be less likely to keep thinking about it and focusing all your mind on wanting it. This, ironically, will put you in a position where achieving the goal is much easier. For me, this is where the balance comes in. Since I now understand that I was attached to the wanting of my goal, I now am in the process of letting go of it. I still want it, but I am completely fine with the fact that I may not do it tomorrow, the day after or to do it for 6 months straight. I take it as it comes and once that balance as settle, I will find myself very happy to get up early for my yogic routine.

And guess what, two or three days after having realized this, I am much more confident about doing it. In fact, this morning I woke up, not at six, but early enough. I took the time to do all my practice and without a surprise, I feel terrific!

Use Your Own Tools

I based myself on some Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) principles and my own experience to come up with this article. The tools I acquired in there are precious to me and they often prove themselves useful in problem solving or solution finding would be the appropriate terms. These are my tools and they work for me. I’m sure they could work for many of you out there but I would be pleased to hear about the ways you have to deal with these type of issues. You are welcome to share them out here on Zen Happens. Hopefully it will add to my humble ideas and help us all become happier and healthier individuals.

It’s cheesy but I mean it!

Zasta

Tags: Uncategorized