I will be posting links to articles, blog posts, etc. about meditation at least twice a week, sometimes more. Here's the first batch:
an article on Vipassana Meditation
jobacle.com
An organization dedicated to increasing the number of people who meditate regularly
perfectinnerpeace.com
A short post on meditation and natural sounds
dailymom.com/articles/2011/28964.html
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
When Changing Your Mind Is Hard
Last post I discussed the topic of changing your thoughts in order to change your life. Many times this is easier said than done. How often have you made a resolution (New Year's or otherwise) to make a change in your life only to find your self falling back into old, unwanted habits shortly thereafter? Why does that happen?
On a physical level when you are trying to introduce a new habit into your life you are literally creating new neural pathways in your brain and throughout your body. As you can imagine, making these new pathways takes time! Moreover, your body will reflexively use the old pathways as those pathways are much "stronger" compared to the new one that you are forming. The old pathways are like the interstate with the high speed limit while the new pathways are like the back roads with all sorts of stop and go traffic. Your body and mind crave efficiency. Given a choice between the interstate and the back roads, they will always use the interstate - unless you consciously take control.
The difference between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is what's in play when you try to form new habits. Your habits are guided/controlled/run by your unconscious mind. Meanwhile your conscious mind is the aspect of you that wants to form a new habit. I will go into detail in another post about the differences between the conscious and the unconscious. Whole books have been written on that topic. For now, let's keep it simple and say that your unconscious mind is stubborn and needs a great deal of "convincing" before it buys into the new habit that you want to form (the new belief you want to have, the new emotional response that you want to have in a recurring situation, the new positivity you want to feel on a regular basis).
So, is there an easy way to convince the unconscious mind to change? I have tried various techniques over the years. Some of them take specialized training and some don't. Some you could probably pick up fairly easily while others you would need to work on for a while to get the hang of it. Since there are so many approaches to dealing with the unconscious mind, I'll choose one technique to talk about today and save other techniques for later posts.
Let's talk about the positive intent of a current behavior. Let's use smoking as an example. You smoke and you want to quit. Instead of simply trying to cold turkey it and quit by force of willpower (the conscious mind trying to override the unconscious mind every time the urge to smoke comes up) try the following instead: 1) disassociate yourself from your habit (get into a state where you are not emotionally worked up by how hard it is to quit, an emotional state in which you can think about your habit objectively - trying to quit when you're jonesing hard is simply not going to work), 2) while you're sitting quietly in your car/cubicle/comfy chair ask yourself the question "What positive outcome does smoking provide me with?" That is, what benefits do you get from smoking? Does it calm your down? Help you deal with stress? Act as a social lubricant? What does it do for you?, 3) Once you have a sense of the benefits of your habit ask yourself if you can think of three other ways to fulfill that benefit that are just as good as smoking. Would taking 10 deep breaths in a row help you deal with stress just as well as smoking does? Would drinking a fresh, cool glass of water? What else?, 4) once you have three different behaviors besides smoking that you think are worthy of trying instead of smoking the next time the urge hits, spend a few minutes and imagine yourself engaging in those behaviors. Make a short video in your head of you taking the deep breaths or drinking the water or going for a short walk or whatever it maybe. Play that video in your head a number of times. When you're taking a shower, play those videos of you engaged in the new behavior. When you're heading to work. When you're falling asleep at night. Matter of fact, it's possible once you get familiar with the above steps to do the whole process as you lie in bed and are waiting to fall asleep. That may be the best time because it gives you unconscious mind a whole night to mull over the options and to look at the videos on its own while your conscious mind is sleeping. Okay. That's it.
Yes, I realize asking yourself questions and expecting an answer may not seem natural to you. If so, pretend someone else is asking you the questions or have a friend or spouse actually ask them of you.
What if you don't get//have an answer when the questions are asked? I'm willing to bet that if there is a habit you want to change that at some level you've given it a great deal of thought and all you have to do now is let the answers come forth. The same with the new options you are trying out. You may first think, "Nothing will be as good as smoking! It's the best way! That's why I do it!" And that's all true. But if it were 100% completely true then you wouldn't want to change the habit. Part of you knows there are downsides to smoking no matter what benefits it provides you. THAT PART will be able to provide other options in terms of behaviors. All you have to do is be objective enough and willing enough to listen to yourself.
The process is more creative (you are creating a new habit) than mere memorization. Will it work the first time you do it? Some people have instantaneous changes when they do this. Others don't. If you do have that quick a change, congratulations! If you don't, then go back and run through the process a few more time. Come up with some different options. Run those movies in your head a bunch more times.
Next week, I'll address leverage and motivation.
On a physical level when you are trying to introduce a new habit into your life you are literally creating new neural pathways in your brain and throughout your body. As you can imagine, making these new pathways takes time! Moreover, your body will reflexively use the old pathways as those pathways are much "stronger" compared to the new one that you are forming. The old pathways are like the interstate with the high speed limit while the new pathways are like the back roads with all sorts of stop and go traffic. Your body and mind crave efficiency. Given a choice between the interstate and the back roads, they will always use the interstate - unless you consciously take control.
The difference between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind is what's in play when you try to form new habits. Your habits are guided/controlled/run by your unconscious mind. Meanwhile your conscious mind is the aspect of you that wants to form a new habit. I will go into detail in another post about the differences between the conscious and the unconscious. Whole books have been written on that topic. For now, let's keep it simple and say that your unconscious mind is stubborn and needs a great deal of "convincing" before it buys into the new habit that you want to form (the new belief you want to have, the new emotional response that you want to have in a recurring situation, the new positivity you want to feel on a regular basis).
So, is there an easy way to convince the unconscious mind to change? I have tried various techniques over the years. Some of them take specialized training and some don't. Some you could probably pick up fairly easily while others you would need to work on for a while to get the hang of it. Since there are so many approaches to dealing with the unconscious mind, I'll choose one technique to talk about today and save other techniques for later posts.
Let's talk about the positive intent of a current behavior. Let's use smoking as an example. You smoke and you want to quit. Instead of simply trying to cold turkey it and quit by force of willpower (the conscious mind trying to override the unconscious mind every time the urge to smoke comes up) try the following instead: 1) disassociate yourself from your habit (get into a state where you are not emotionally worked up by how hard it is to quit, an emotional state in which you can think about your habit objectively - trying to quit when you're jonesing hard is simply not going to work), 2) while you're sitting quietly in your car/cubicle/comfy chair ask yourself the question "What positive outcome does smoking provide me with?" That is, what benefits do you get from smoking? Does it calm your down? Help you deal with stress? Act as a social lubricant? What does it do for you?, 3) Once you have a sense of the benefits of your habit ask yourself if you can think of three other ways to fulfill that benefit that are just as good as smoking. Would taking 10 deep breaths in a row help you deal with stress just as well as smoking does? Would drinking a fresh, cool glass of water? What else?, 4) once you have three different behaviors besides smoking that you think are worthy of trying instead of smoking the next time the urge hits, spend a few minutes and imagine yourself engaging in those behaviors. Make a short video in your head of you taking the deep breaths or drinking the water or going for a short walk or whatever it maybe. Play that video in your head a number of times. When you're taking a shower, play those videos of you engaged in the new behavior. When you're heading to work. When you're falling asleep at night. Matter of fact, it's possible once you get familiar with the above steps to do the whole process as you lie in bed and are waiting to fall asleep. That may be the best time because it gives you unconscious mind a whole night to mull over the options and to look at the videos on its own while your conscious mind is sleeping. Okay. That's it.
Yes, I realize asking yourself questions and expecting an answer may not seem natural to you. If so, pretend someone else is asking you the questions or have a friend or spouse actually ask them of you.
What if you don't get//have an answer when the questions are asked? I'm willing to bet that if there is a habit you want to change that at some level you've given it a great deal of thought and all you have to do now is let the answers come forth. The same with the new options you are trying out. You may first think, "Nothing will be as good as smoking! It's the best way! That's why I do it!" And that's all true. But if it were 100% completely true then you wouldn't want to change the habit. Part of you knows there are downsides to smoking no matter what benefits it provides you. THAT PART will be able to provide other options in terms of behaviors. All you have to do is be objective enough and willing enough to listen to yourself.
The process is more creative (you are creating a new habit) than mere memorization. Will it work the first time you do it? Some people have instantaneous changes when they do this. Others don't. If you do have that quick a change, congratulations! If you don't, then go back and run through the process a few more time. Come up with some different options. Run those movies in your head a bunch more times.
Next week, I'll address leverage and motivation.
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