08/05/2020
*** Try this ! ***
Marc Weltersbach - Coaching & thérapies
First of all it is important to understand that with the combination of psychology and recent discoveries in neuroscience it is now established that everything we do, we do for a "good" reason, conscious or unconscious.
No matter what it is, any action or behavior is linked to a belief, which for our brain is the most appropriate at that time.
For example, a smoker may have a conscious or unconscious belief that smoking is more beneficial to him than not smoking at a particular time.
It is therefore important to understand that well-being or suffering only depends on what your nervous system associates with it. It’s what you feel in your body on a physical and emotional level right now that counts.
To implement a change it is therefore essential to "recalibrate" your nervous system, which means associate the actions you want with a positive feeling and the actions you no longer want with a negative feeling.
To give you an example, remember an alcohol that you liked but that after a drunken evening you cannot even smell so much it arouses disgust in you! (emotional feeling) Your brain has simply associated this negative feeling with this alcohol so deeply that you “can’t” drink it anymore! Therefore this particular event triggered an unconscious recalibration of your nervous system.
It’s exactly this process that we use to create what we want for our life.
CHANGE IS NEVER A QUESTION OF CAPACITY, IT IS ALWAYS A QUESTION OF MOTIVATION!
Step 1: Find your motivation
- Find a change you want to implement.
- Concentrate for 5 minutes, and write down the positive consequences that this change will have on you. It is important for your brain that your formulation is positive. Ex: Write, "quitting smoking will allow me to breathe better" rather than "I will cough less".
- Then write down how the fact of not changing will bring you suffering or discomfort.
- Add what positive aspect this change could bring to your family and friends. Or negative if you don't put it in place.
- It is imperative to associate yourself completely (imagine, visualize and feel physically), first of all to the well-being brought about by the change and then to the suffering if you don’t change, because, as indicated in the introduction, as long as the behavior is not associated with more suffering than well-being, your unconscious mind has no interest in changing behavior. It is more important to feel physically than to understand intellectually. For example a smoker knows intellectually that it is not good for his body. He knows that one day he risks cancer but it is not immediate.
By using all your senses, however, the feeling is immediate.
Also, be aware that most of us live with two fears that can block us in the process of change.
The first fear is simply fear of change in itself because we tend to hold on to what we know. It can bring discomfort that weighs in the balance of advantages or disadvantages in applying this change. The second is the fear of trying and failing, which brings even deeper and stronger discomfort.
For these reasons it is imperative to associate the change that you wish to undertake, an immediate change, to much more well-being than the fact of not changing added to the discomfort caused by these two fears. On the other hand, associate even more discomfort to the fact of not changing than to taking the "risk" of the change.
- Tell yourself that change is imperative for you, that it must change for you to feel good, that it is only through you that this change can take place and that you have all the necessary capacities to implement this change (this does not prevent you from being helped out).
Step 2: Interrupt the repetition process
- First, bring awareness by observing your habit, behavior, belief, etc ... and notice when the action you want to change takes place.
- Also write down the story you tell yourself to explain or justify it (Ex: I had a stressful day, I'm just going to light a cigarette, eat chocolate…).
- Write down what you are feeling at this precise moment. What you feel physically and emotionally (Ex: physically, I feel my heartbeat rising and emotionally I feel fear or anxiety).
- You will realize that THE SOURCE OF THE PROCESS IS ALWAYS EMOTIONAL.
- Then, interrupt the pattern as soon as it occurs and replace it with a different action that gives you pleasure, well-being, joy (a gesture, a sound, a thought, a new mental film, videos of cats on Instagram, something that makes you laugh, etc.)
- Check that this change is good for you as well as for those around you!
- Repeat this over and over again each time the behavior you want to change takes place.
Neuroscience has taught us very recently that we produce around 1,400 new neurons per day, even adults. Imagine that what you want to change is represented by a neuron that you have continually stimulated, like a plant that you have watered and which now has very large branches. To implement the change, it is a question of stopping stimulating this neuron and placing your attention on the baby neuron which will be at the origin of the new behavior, the new belief, the new habit. By stimulating it every day it will eventually become your main path of thought.
- If it doesn't work, try something else!
- If it still doesn't work, try something else!
- There is always something that works!
- The only barrier between you and change is the story you tell yourself (Ex: I always procrastinated, if I don't drink at night I don't sleep, my relationships are always problematic, I have tried everything, I smoked all my life, my parents were also smokers…)!
- When you stop the pattern it is important to reward yourself, feel good, have fun and be proud of yourself. Again it is essential to feel it physically. For example, you can close your eyes, breathe, and think back to the last time you accomplished something with satisfaction.
Short therapy techniques have shown us that it is possible to implement any change. It is not always simple but if you really want to, remember that you have all the physiological capacities and the emotional possibilities for it, your brain has all the resources to get there!
Try it now and do not hesitate to be helped out if you feel the need.