Do you have a habit or pattern of behaviour that you wish you could stop doing but have been unable to?
Maybe it is overeating
Maybe it is smoking
Maybe it is overthinking everything
Maybe it is finding it too hard to say no to people
I have some good news for you. If you really want to change something but haven’t been able to, then the reason is not that you don’t have enough willpower, or haven’t learned enough yet, or haven’t found the right answer. It is because you have programs running deep in your mind that you are not consciously aware of yet which are driving your behaviour. Your subconscious mind controls most of your behaviour, but it largely runs on auto-pilot without your conscious awareness. This is where all the programming you took on when you were a child is held as an operating system.
This is usually the key reason why you find it hard to change habits or behaviours. It is like you creating a digital document and are changing the font on the page, but there are preset, automatic programmes which consistently over-ride the change. You may be making a conscious decision in your head to change your behaviour, but unless you do something to interrupt or update your subconscious programming, then that will keep kicking in as your automatic default way of thinking and behaving. There are a number of different ways to interrupt and update your subconscious programming, but one of the fastest, easiest and most effective ways I have come across is through what I call embodied mindfulness.
Embodied mindfulness practices work so effectively because they tap into your subconscious and unconscious mind which controls most of your behaviour, and they tap into what is going on for you now in the present moment. You don’t need to go back into the story of how a behaviour was created. You only need to connect to what your body is holding in terms of thoughts and feelings now. Trauma is not what we experience. Trauma is how we interpret and process what we experience. This is why several people can all have the same experience, and for some it is traumatic and for others it is not. It is why siblings growing up in the same family can have quite different memories and learned responses to the same environment. This is also why your thoughts and feelings are valid for you regardless of comparison to what anyone else is thinking or feeling or has experienced. Your thoughts and feelings are your information about what is happening in your nervous system and what energy needs processing for you. Moreover, what is relevant is not what you experienced in the past, but what you are holding in your body in response to that now.
Let’s look at an example of how this might work. Excessive overthinking and worry, and/or anxious people pleasing is commonly a response to being criticised a lot when you were a child, and you had to analyse everything you did in order to feel accepted by your parents and avoid being told off. You learned to be hyper-vigilant to read their energy and try to predict all the possible outcomes in order to create a level of safety for yourself. This became an imprinted programme in your subconscious; a deeply embedded pattern of behaviour. It is likely that you were not fully aware of what you were doing when you were young, and that as an adult you now think that it’s in your personality to be worried and anxious because you can’t seem to stop.
Through embodied mindfulness practices and coaching you can intuitively connect into that scared inner child programming and re-parent yourself to feel loved, good enough and safe to relax. When you transform your deep inner programming in this way, the change in your outer behaviour can often happen effortlessly and naturally.
If you have a behaviour that you have been trying to stop but haven’t been able to, then let go of beating yourself up about it. There is nothing wrong with you. There is just deeply embedded energy (beliefs. judgements and emotions) held within you that is keeping you stuck in a certain pattern of behaviour. This energy can be released through embodiment practices, freeing you to make the change that you want.
Aroha nui, much love
Janine
Want more help?
Please note that it is difficult to make any significant change when your body is in a stress state. This is why the first part of my book, 10 Steps to Happiness, is focused on supporting you to reduce stress. This book guides you through ten easy foundational steps to creating positive change in your life. They are the steps I took to help me move out of a place of self-hatred, illness and a second divorce into a place of transformational self-love and fulfilment.
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