Modern
neuroscience teaches that neurons in your brain that fire together wire
together, creating neuro-circuits in the process. The more frequently you activate
such neuro-circuits in your brain, and the more passionate or intense your
feelings are in the process, the stronger the respective patterns become.
To master any skill, you need
to repeat it frequently, and with intensity.
This
is why my Karate Sensei taught me to practice each and every move at least 10’000
times to reach perfection. Likewise, the more you practice playing the violin,
speaking a foreign language, or engaging in deep philosophical reflection, the
stronger the respective neuro-circuits become.
Lao Tzu stated that we need to learn something new
every day.
But he obviously knew that our ability to learn is
about more than acquiring new knowledge, expanding our horizons, or
establishing and strengthening neural connections.
So
Lao Tzu went on to say that in order to learn something new, we first need to unlearn.
In
order to establish new healthy patterns of thinking, feeling and believing, we
need to unlearn the old ones.
We
need to delete, overwrite, reprogram or realign old negative patterns, before
we can establish new, positive neuro-circuits.
Neuroscientists
call this process synaptic pruning.
Imagine
your brain as a forest full of trees (which neuroscientists call dendrites),
with each tree representing a thought. As in any forest, you may find tall,
strong, well established, older trees, with smaller, younger, more vulnerable
trees in between.
The
more space, nutrients, sunlight and water a tree gets, the more it will be able
to flourish, grow and prosper.
The
more attention and emotional energy you invest in a thought, the stronger it
becomes.
Luckily,
you have the equivalent of active forest rangers, specialized cells that
monitor and manage the growth of your brain forest. Some of these cells speed
up growth and communication, whilst others remove the dead wood.
These
specialized forest rangers can help you to overcome your self-sabotage patterns,
through a process of pruning and cleaning up the synaptic connections in your
brain.
Neuroscientists
have found that the synaptic connections that get used least get marked by a specific protein. It seems that when your
brain’s forest ranger cells detect such a marker, they attach themselves to the
protein and delete the respective synaptic connection.
This
is how your brain gets rid of dead wood and waste in the forest of your brain, making
space for you to develop new, strong, healthy thought-trees. In order to delete
unhealthy self- sabotage patterns, your brain needs to prune the respective
neural connections, before you can develop better, stronger thought-trees.
Your
brain goes through this pruning and cleaning process whilst you sleep.
That
is why a good night’s rest will usually enable you to think more clearly. Even
short naps give your brain’s forest wardens the opportunity to clean up the
undergrowth and create the space required to create new, healthy thought
patterns.
Thus sleep-deprivation is
often a key cause of self-sabotage!
If
your brain’s forest rangers don’t get enough time and opportunity to do their
maintenance work, cleaning out the unhealthy growth and dead wood, your brain
will become overgrown, slow and ineffective.
You
Can Help Your Forest Rangers!
According
to neuroscience, it seems that you can influence what your brain’s forest
wardens prune while you sleep, by consciously
determining which synaptic connections need to be deleted.
The
interesting fact here is that synaptic connections you don’t use get marked for deletion, whilst the thought-trees
and neural connections you use frequently, and with intensity, get nurtured
and supported in their growth.
This
is why it is so important to monitor, manage and focus your thoughts, as well
as the related emotions.
Dwelling
on negative thoughts, bad experiences, old emotional wounds or even fear of the
future will strengthen the respective thought-trees in your brain’s forest,
crowding out any young, healthy positive thoughts you might have developed.
Beware Of The Success Gurus
Some
success experts teach that you need to associate massive pain with thoughts,
beliefs, behaviors or habits you wish to overcome, and at the same time
associate incredible pleasure with achieving your desired goals.
This
is often referred to as the “push-and-pull” approach to change management.
The
logic behind this is that you get pushed or propelled forward by your need to
avoid pain, loss, risk or death. And, at the same time, you get pulled towards
the successful achievement of your objectives by the promise of the pleasure,
joy, fulfillment and satisfaction that awaits you. In our executive coaching
practice we have found that this approach seems to work well in the short term,
but in the longer term, the positive effects often don’t seem to be
sustainable.
The
problem with this pleasure-and-pain approach is that attaching powerful,
painful emotional energy to the negative patterns you wish to get rid of
actually seems to strengthen the respective thought-trees.
Instead
of cutting down the self-sabotage trees, this process seems to make them
larger, stronger, more powerful, enabling them to physically crowd out the
younger, positive thoughts you planted.
Even
simply spending time thinking about your self-sabotage patterns, or why you
frequently find yourself getting in your own way, will actually strengthen the
respective negative thought patterns, beliefs, habits and behaviors.
Since
many of these negative thoughts and feelings are toxic, they may cause your
brain to release too many or too few hormones and vital nutrients into your
body, causing a chemical imbalance and further physical havoc.
Why Wait?
You
may be growing impatient by now, wishing to jump right in there and get things sorted
out immediately, once and for all.
I
empathize.
We
all seem to prefer the quick fix, the shortcuts, the heroic approach of taking
massive, immediate action, rather than taking the time to get things done
properly.
And
I have to confess, it is true that sometimes making a single, firm decision can
clean out a whole set of negative thoughts, feelings, behaviors and habits in a
split second.
This
is what happened to my father in law.
He
was a heavy, heavy smoker for most of his life.
Plus
he drank loads of coffee.
He
loved his food, ate plenty of it, and got very little exercise.
The
doctors put him on one diet after another.
But
none of them worked.
Until
he had a heart-attack.
And
then another.
He
never touched another cigarette for the rest of his life as of that moment.
We
call this shock therapy.
The
ultimate quick fix.
It
is very heroic.
The
stuff films are made of.
But
you don’t need to have a heart-attack to successfully get rid of your
self-sabotage patterns and experience a real breakthrough, with sustainable,
satisfying success.
My
wife is a medical doctor – an orthopedic surgeon. She often tells me that her
patients will only comply with her “doctor’s orders” as long as they feel pain,
or as long as the uncomfortable symptoms persist.
Most
patients would prefer to simply receive a magic pill, to make the pain go away,
or some cortisone, to make the rash disappear.
But
if she gives them this type of medication, they typically will no longer comply
with the other things she tells them to do, like:
-
change their diet, drink more water, use the
supplements she prescribes
-
get more exercise on a regular basis
-
book sessions with a specialized physiotherapist
-
etc.
Even
if she tells patients that they risk the amputation of a finger, a hand, an arm
or a leg – that danger seems to be so far away in the distant future, that
patients will not change their routines.
Patients
seem to prefer risking a potential, but seemingly improbable, future loss,
rather than making uncomfortable changes in the here and now.
And
then, when the highly improbable event occurs, they heroically bite the bullet,
and my wife needs to cut off part of their body.
Such
heroic action may be impressive.
But
it is not very intelligent.
Let
me tell you – the body remembers the hand you lost, and it continues to feel
the pain.
So,
what should you do instead of this heroic approach?
The
solution may seem too simple for you to believe.
But
as you probably know, not everything that looks simple is actually that simple
when you get down to putting it into action.
My
Sensei made those Karate moves look very simple.
But
it took me a long time to get them right.
As
so often, knowing does not equal doing.
How To Delete Self-Sabotage
Patterns
It
seems that all you really need to do, in order to overcome your self-sabotage
patterns, is to identify the respective
negative thoughts, emotions, beliefs, habits and behaviors, and mark them for
deletion.
How
do you mark them?
By
deliberately paying these thoughts and emotions no more attention, once you have identified them.
Starve them to death!
This
may sound brutal.
But
indeed, if you want to stop these self-sabotage patterns from limiting your
ability to succeed, you need to be ruthless.
Once
you have marked the self-sabotage thought-trees for deletion, allow your
brain’s forest wardens to do their work.
Let
them cut down the old, limiting, self-sabotage thought-trees you have
identified, and then proactively replace
them with beautiful, healthy, positive ones!
What
we focus on grows, whilst what we ignore dies.
Your Mind’s Main Modes Of
Operation:
According
to modern psychology, it seems that your mind operates in three main modes:
1. The growth
mode, in which we engage in creative, expansive, positive, life-affirming
thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships
2. The maintenance
mode, in which we operate in neutral gear, going nowhere
3. The protective
survival mode, in which we engage in defensive, conservative, risk-averse,
negative, fight- or flight activities.
Your
self-sabotage patterns operate in the second and third mode.
To stop these patterns, you
need to move into the first, positive, creative mode.
No,
this is not just about positive
thinking, affirmations, declarations or incantations.
In
order to operate effectively in the constructive mode of mental activity, you
need to get into a state of flow and
think deeply.
The Deep Thought Technique
Neuroscientists
have found that you need to engage in deep, concentrated thinking for 10 – 15
minutes per day, over a period of at
least one week, in order to firmly establish a new thought pattern in your
brain.
The
process involves 6 simple steps that
you repeat frequently – ideally every day, and preferably whilst engaged in
some pleasant, flowful activity (like cooking, gardening, hiking, jogging,
meditating):
1. Pick a personally relevant topic you wish to
think about deeply, then consciously interrogate, assess and analyze it from
all possible angles
2. Focus on the pleasant activity you are engaged
in, stop consciously thinking about the topic, get into a state of flow, and
let your subconscious do the creative work. Take note of any ideas, insights,
inklings or intuitive concepts that come to mind
3. Immediately document
these insights (I suggest that you keep a thought-journal)
4. Then decide on specific, simple action steps you can take to put these insights to
the test immediately
5. Take action and document your experiences, what
worked, what not, and why.
6. Refine
your approach based on the feedback received, during your next thought process,
and take action to establish strong
personal references and experiences.
Experience shows that if you stick with this process for two months or more,
you will form a new, strong, healthy
thinking habit.
Remember
– you get more of what you focus on.
So
learn to manage your focus.
Think
deeply!
And
enjoy the process.