“We are discussing how to get past chronic prior bad conditioning, habits, and move into positive new ways of being, freer and more resourceful. This blog is continued from the last. I share a couple approaches from the many participants engage in during workshops.

You can take two vantage points. One is you see yourself in your mental movie. You watch as if you are an actor on the movie screen performing the actions. You watch yourself before and after the trigger. You see yourself, the trigger the stop, calm and continue.

You view YOU behaving resourcefully. In this disassociated way of seeing you can act as a movie director would and make your mental movie screen more compelling by playing with the color, size of image, sound and other elements which contribute to your feelings.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do 

The other way is to see what you would be seeing through your own eyes. You don’t see yourself but you see the world around you. You see the other cars and drivers, the  world from your point of view. You see what you see as you do in everyday life looking forward.

Rehearse success from each vantage point. When you watch yourself going through it you would have the feelings a movie audience member would have watching a character go through the circumstances. Do you understand? You can ask questions of me.

Use comments and I’ll answer as best I can. In the other vantage point, looking through your own eyes, you’d feel how you feel actually going through it. Since it is rehearsal you may not feel all of it but you’d feel what it is like to some degree. Feel it fully.

Break Bad Habits And Make Better Ones

In this process you change what happens when you get triggered to react less than gloriously. In the movie screen version you watch yourself stop and then behave differently. In the through your eyes version you experience the trigger, feel it and alter it. Get it?

The instant you become aware that you are feeling or thinking or behaving less than gloriously you must STOP! Pause and choose to behave differently. Behave as you prefer to behave. In repeating the mental exercise again and again you are rehearsing what you WANT.

Stop mentally rehearsing what you do NOT want. That is how you have been living and getting what you don’t want. Focus on what you DO want. Is it difficult to change the old habit? Of course, habits can be  tough to break at first.

Small Daily Improvements Are The Key To Great Results

To break it you bring awareness to the moment; become aware of what sets it off. It may seem difficult to do at first trying to notice the moment prior to reacting less than gloriously. It is likely you will blow through it many times but keep at it.

Eventually, you will notice sooner. You will get quicker at it. Your awareness will increase and you will be able to slip into that gap and divert the energy. No one can say how soon this will happen so you have to commit to sticking with it. Don’t give up keep at it.

Eventually, you will gain the upper hand. Mastery of anything, any skill, talent, behavior takes application, attention and practice. Repeated, correctly over a long enough period of time is how skills are developed. Even getting angry at traffic is a learned response.

Drop By Drop The Tub Fills – Awareness Is The Key To Change

In this process you learn to bring awareness to the trigger prior to being flooded with neuro-chemicals and impulses. As soon as you are aware of the changes you stop and take that deep breath interrupting the pattern you originally learned.

Interrupt it enough. Divert it with useful behavior you’d prefer to engage in and soon you will have developed new habits. It may take a little time so be patient. The more committed your are to learning the new behaviors the easier and quicker they will take hold.

Appreciate the process. I am sharing one of a number of approaches you can utilize to make changes. As always practice gratitude and positivity.  Fill your life with celebration. Enjoy the process because you can make some powerful changes. Enjoy celebration and celebrate everything.” Rex Sikes

What will you do to have a glorious day?

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Horizons photo used with permission of Phil Koch.

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“Okay, are you ready for some tough love. I know some people won’t like what I am about to say, while others will heartily agree. I think it needs to be said. Some people don’t like to hear things but the bottom line is we don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t.

I may make this two parts. I don’t know, nor can I know, what it is that I don’t know, given my present state of awareness. I can’t connect the dots forward but I can after the fact, go back and see how they lead up to this moment. But I can’t know in advance.

SO whether you want to hear this or not, perhaps you need to. I need to that is for certain. So what is good for the goose is good for the gander, right? I share this because I think it is one of the main reasons people have difficulty in their lives. Ready, here goes.

Good Decisions Come From Experience

If your life is crap it is because you ALREADY, outside of you own awareness, decided it is crap. The decision was made for you, by you, out of old chronic conditioning. Your very own habits determined how you would react. They’ll determine how you react to this blog.

You (we) react before you (we) have any awareness of what was happening. That is how the brain works. It learns to do things and then it does them automatically. Something internal or external triggers a programs and away it goes. It runs on and on.

Until or unless something happens to alter it or stop it, it does what it LEARNED to do.  Habits are wired in. There are good habits and good programs that run a lot of your life. There are other habits many might label less than glorious. Many of these run your life too.

Experience Comes From Bad Decisions – Learn From Everything

For example, getting very mad because traffic is ‘bad’. You don’t have to. Some people don’t, but, you do, (IF you do)  because that is what you’ve always done. Somewhere, at sometime, you reacted that way enough until it became a reliable neural highway in your head.

Chemicals squirt and electric impulses fire off in a particular sequence and voila’ ROAD RAGE! It is reliable. It is automatic. It happens fast. It happens every time. You live with road stress. You’d prefer not to but you haven’t changed it, yet. It is reliable!

If this occurs day and night, to work and back this is NO way to spend your time. It is no way to spend your time in a car. Some people don’t stop there. They recount the story, feeling stressed each time they do, multiple times throughout the day.

You Are Not A Product Of Circumstances But Of Decisions

Some people are worse at this than you are, but many others are far better. They aren’t bothered at all about traffic. They travel to and from places hardly ever getting ruffled for even a little bit. For some others it may be a mild nuisance. Annoying but they let it go.

The only way to change it IS to change it. You have to get inside and make a new decision before the old one fires off.  BUT how on earth can you do that? How do you extinguish the chronic behavior? You have to teach the brain ‘Not That’ but ‘This’ instead.

You have to train your brain to NOT DO THAT but to do this other thing instead. You have to shift from rage to relaxed. HOW? Awareness is the key. Since you can’t stop it before the trigger results in a flood of electro-chemical activity you must catch it.

The Most Important Decision You Make Is To Be In A Good Mood

You must catch it shortly afterwards. The sooner the better. SO you must become sensitized to what sets it off. You must know the trigger. You must know the trigger point. You learn what this is by deciding to change it. That is the first step. You make a decision.

Then you bring awareness to the situation. You begin to plan. ‘When that occurs I’ll do this instead.’ You can really benefit from visualization here. Imagine the situation that sets the sequence off. As you begin to see and feel yourself go into the old behavior, STOP.

Imagine yourself creating a pause. STOP, see yourself take a deep breath. TAKE ONE! Or two or three. Imagine yourself being aware that as it starts you stop it by changing your breathing. Visualize this again and again. You stop, breath and watch yourself shift.

To Change Your Life You Must Change Your Habits

Watch yourself calm down and behave differently. See yourself behave how you want to behave. You stop, calm, and drive normally. You stay calm and relaxed, but attentive and alert to the driving process. You imagine being how you want to be at that moment.

You rehearse the behavior again and again in your mind. There are two perceptual vantage points to take and I have just described one. I’ll describe the other in the next blog. For now you can practice this with any issue you would like to change. Practice on something mild.

It is always wise to choose something that is not to emotionally significant or overpowering at first. Learn the process, get good at it before moving on to more emotionally charged issues. This is wise practice. Take baby steps leading up to bigger change.

Replace Your Negative Thought Habits With Positive Ones

Practice making the changes. Practice your feeling gratitude. Begin and end each day and each practice session looking for this to feel grateful about and express your appreciation for these. Feel it fully and enjoy and delight int he feelings. Celebrate everything!” Rex Sikes

Have a glorious day!

If you like these posts please subscribe. If you think these posts would help others please share them. Help Spread the word.

Horizons photo used with permission of Phil Koch.

NEW BLOG SITE LAUNCHES SOON – Do you get this blog emailed to you? You will have  to again subscribe to this blog, newsletter. I’d hate for you to miss anything when it switches. Subscribe and Follow Daily Inspiration and Gratitude!