ALL BEHAVIOR AND BELIEFS CAN BE CHANGED!
AND YOU MUST DO THIS PROCESS
BUT...
"But this is the way I've always been. I can't change. This is just me. A screw up in life, not nearly good enough. I'm stuck being this way." (And so on, ad nauseam, in a continuing self-reinforcing downward spiral, sucking as it goes...)
Horse pitooey!
FIRST, KNOW WHAT IS TRUE
This is a lack of knowledge coupled with a lack of higher brain activation, just a repeating of a belief (by the primitive brain) as if it is the truth.
The truth (i.e. reality) is that:
1. We have brains.
2. They operate in a certain mechanical manner.
3. They form pathways that make life work better and easier.
4. The pathways are like grooves in the soil: if we keep pouring water down them, they become bigger, turning into ruts, creeks, then rivers of great force.
5. They can be altered only by doing the same thing that created them in the first place, but this time intentionally.
6. This takes time.
7. We fail to realize it takes time, so we conclude that we have "failed" when we actually have just stopped short and/or had a strategy that was not the best.
8. We make ourselves wrong and attach a label of "bad" (in term of "valence").
9. We think, because we have seen something happen over and over, that this is "just what is so", as if a film of false images strung together and run fast enough looks like one true picture of what is going on.
The fault is not in us, as we all have workable mechanical apparatus in our brains. The truth is in #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6. What is false and/or delusional lies in #7, #8, and #9.
If we understand that the latter three are wrong and correct them, then we can change anything, any belief, any behavior, any habit - for they are all developed, not innate in us.
NO "MYSTERIOUS" FORCES
We also tend to believe that there is some mysterious force (such as our badness, our faultiness, the devil, or whatever) that is more powerful than we are. That is total bullbleep! There are only mechanics (laws of physics) at play and we need only realize what they are and align with them that which we do.
We need to realize that it is true that "neurons that fire together wire together", forming greater and greater ruts (pathways) for the "water" (electricity) to go down to cause action.
If we had a bad experience and felt threatened, the experience is wired in, by the brain, attached to the idea of a threat. If something similar occurs, then more wiring is added.
And the groove gets bigger and bigger and it becomes harder and harder for water to go down anywhere else - until there is an "else" to go down.
CREATE THE ALTERNATIVE, THEN...
To create the alternative path, we must use the same mechanical means, as that is the way that nature has set up the process to work.
There are no "miracle workarounds", nor is it one's "fault" that one can't solve a bad groove merely from willpower or some superhuman force to fight it.
We can only go down the right pathway to solve it - and that path is to intentionally form pathways that will be alternatives to the "old pathways".
THIS IS THE WAY IT OCCURS
Unfortunately, but realistically, we will fail to have the new pathway outpower the old pathway at first - at first, we will always fail - but we need to keep trying and to not stop doing so, until the new pathway is strong enough to sometimes win... and then win more and more until it becomes the dominant pathway, while the other one starts to wither and go to dust. [The brain actually notices that the old pathway is not really being used, so it goes and gets the material to use it elsewhere in the brain.]
"Old dogs cannot learn new tricks." (Or "this is just me" rather than something I acquired.) That is simply not in alignment with reality. It is proven that the brain has neuroplasticity - that it can change - during ALL of our lives. We can always learn new tricks. It is also true that the longer we have used a pathway the deeper the groove that we need to replace, so it can take a bit longer, but we can, in the end of our change process, get what we want - a fully intact new groove to operate easily in life for a better life.
Then, we will be truly "groovin' in life!"
[Each time we do the process, the level we live life at goes up because we have a new behavior (whether a physical behavior or a new mental behavior, such as our internal conversation) that pays off many dividends as it repeats itself over and over, benefitting us far more than the one-time "cost" of some effort to create the new way. The net benefit (after subtracting the cost, is immense, especially if we pick the most life-impactful ways of living life that we want to change - from behaviors that lessen our lives to beliefs that have us living in fear and anxiety.
Are you willing to go through "the process" fully, to not stop short, and to not stop until you've gotten the (mechanically very reachable) result that will enhance the rest of your life?
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UNDERSTAND THIS ABOUT THE BASICS
I think it is important to know, along the same lines as the thinking in this article, that all of what seems like your "defeats" (or failures) are merely the "winning out of one groove over another" - a result in a sense of a "competing" pathways.
Since everything we do is for the purpose of "better surviving" or "just plain surviving" and since we cannot do two things at once, one believed good-for-us action will displace another believed good-for-us action. (The primitive brain, as we've pointed out, often "believes" an action is good for us but wrongly believes it - so we must intervene whenever we see it activating something that is not beneficial or is harmful to us.)
The Key
However, if we don't think things out while we are at a higher perspective, all of our competing actions will be based on a much more short term orientation.
This is because the primitive brain does not have access to long term thinking. It, instead, evolved, rather well in the old world, by short term survival 'thinking'. The 'thinking' the primitive brain does is not actually the same as 'truly thinking'. The primitive brain primarily does simple associations very quickly, to see what might threaten our survival, based on past (fairly frequently wrong) patterns and occurrences - and it implements them right now, in what can be called "reactive thinking" or "reactivity". [Instant reactions benefitted our survival, so they dominate our behavior, unless we purposely choose to engage the higher brain.]
Most of us think 'reactively' about 'reactivity'. We make it 'bad' that we do that. Though it is often not good for the long term to not think things out better and to formulate better strategies, it cannot possibly be 'wrong' or 'bad' of us to have our brain do what it is designed to do - quick reactions to save our behinds - which it has done magnificently (or we wouldn't be here at all!)!
It is not wrong.
We just have to learn new knowledge that will have us be able to step back and engage our higher brain in a higher thinking, longer term process.
This is a subpiece of the overall process, which I call The Process. You should definitely, without doubt, learn and understand "The Process" - and then use it for the rest of your life - for a much better life!!!!
