Category: Psychology – Behavior and Mind

Do I want to change, or do I just want things to go my way?  Quickly and magically pretty please!  According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, in his book You Are the Placebo; making our mind matter:

“We think somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 thoughts in one day.  90 percent of those thoughts are exactly the same ones we had the day before. 

“We get up on the same side of the bed, go through the same routine in the bathroom, comb our hair in the same way, sit in the same chair as we eat the same breakfast and hold our mug in the same hand, drive the same route to the same job, and do the same things we know how to do so well with the same people (who push the same emotional buttons) every day. 

“And then we hurry up and go home so that we can hurry up and check our e-mail so that we can hurry up and eat dinner so that we can hurry up and watch our favorite TV shows so that we can hurry up and brush our teeth in the same bedtime routines so that we can hurry up and go to bed at the same time so that we can hurry up and do it all over again the next day.”

“Holy Smokes Batman!” 

“As a result of this conscious or unconscious process, your biology stays the same.  Neither your brain nor your body changes at all, because you’re thinking the same thoughts, performing the same actions, and living by the same emotions—even though you may be secretly hoping your life will change.”

“You must observe and pay attention to those emotions derived from past experiences that you’ve memorized and that you live by on a daily basis, and decide if living by those familiar emotions over and over again belongs in your future or is loving to you.  You see, most people try to create a new personal reality as the same old personality, and it doesn’t work.  In order to change your life, you have to literally become someone else.” 

Back in the 80’s I was the “affirmation” queen; devouring Florence Scoval Shinn’s Your Word is Your Wand, and Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life.  Everything was open for reimagining and a divine boost.  Scraps of paper could be found tucked, taped and displayed wherever I went – reminding me that I was “willing to change.”  Over 100 affirmations remain jotted down for rumination in my quote journal.  So many hopes, dreams and desires.

Over 30 years ago I planted the seed that I was willing to change; and change I have – quite dramatically.  The desire and willingness remain; leaving me with a bit of a butterfly stomach – seeing I’ve experienced that this stuff works.

Dr. Joe says: “.. new thoughts should lead to new choices.  New choices should lead to new behaviors.  New behaviors should lead to new experiences.  New experiences should create new emotions, and new emotions and feelings should inspire you to think in new ways.  That’s called “evolution.”  And your personal reality and your biology—your brain circuitry, your internal chemistry, your genetic expression, and ultimately your health—should change as a result of this new personality, this new state of being.  And it all seems to start with a thought.”

As some of my friends would say – “sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly – it will always materialize if we work for it.”  The magic is with the work and outside the comfort zone.

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“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

When I’m squeezed between aspiration and reality, hearing Pema Chodron’s experience is encouraging.  She recounts a moment of clarity during a habitual response to money issues.  She shared how that illuminating moment was likely the result of –

“.. years of looking as honestly and uncritically as I could at my experience.  Possibly it was also a result of all the meditation training I had done in seeing when I’d spin off and then just coming back to the present.” 

Dang It – no shortcut!  Gotta put in the foot work.  “The key is changing our habits and, in particular, the habits of our mind.”  She shares how she got it that day –

“Right there in the middle of a very habitual state of mind, I saw what I was doing.  I not only saw what I was doing I also stopped.  I stopped following through with my habitual plan to save the day.  I decided not to rush around trying to avert disaster.  I let the thoughts that “only I could rescue us” come and I let them go.  I decided to see what would happen without my input-even if it meant that everything would fall apart.  Sometimes you just have to let everything fall apart.  Stopping my actions was the first step and the hardest one.” 

“The instruction is to stop.  Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks.”  – Doing this “can bring about revolutionary changes in how we perceive things.”

Feeling the squeeze . . . in my reality I stop after I spin off; with all the pleasures of reeling in the repercussions of my big fat mouth … thankyouverymuch …  start where you are.

Hearing Pema Chodron say this work helps us see that we “have no ground to stand on,” is on the other side of my cultural cozy zone.

Happily, there are parallels in the west, and I’m psyched when I find them.  I picked up Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg Ph.D.  This book is about “reframing how we express ourselves and hear others.  Instead of habitual, automatic reactions, our words become conscious responses based firmly on awareness…”   Sounds like mindfulness to me – very eastern and Buddhist.  Seeing concepts crossing apparent boundaries reinforces my belief in the inter-connection of all things.

Dr. Rosenberg outlines the four components of the nonviolent communication process (NVP):

1. Observations – observe without evaluation. Stop the judging!
2. Feelings – take responsibility for what we feel; know that it’s not what we “think”
3. Needs – connect our feelings to our needs “I feel . . . because I need . . . “
4. Requests – ask for what we want, not what we don’t want

Pema Chodron says that “the instruction is to stop . . . do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction . . .” Marshall Rosenberg suggests the same.

There’s a great list of “feeling words” in Rosenberg’s book.  Helpful.  Being a thinker, I’m comfortable with thinking words.  They’re very different than feeling words.  Adding the “because I need. . . “ phrase is an added stretch!  Where is that darn “because I need” list of words!  Poo-di.  The effort is worth it; especially if I want to have compassionate and empathetic conversations.  Rosenberg says that “needs are at the roots of feelings” and that –

 “When we express our needs indirectly through the use of evaluations, interpretations, and images, others are likely to hear criticism.  And when people hear anything that sounds like criticism, they tend to invest their energy in self-defense or counterattack.  If we wish for a compassionate response from others, it is self-defeating to express our needs by interpreting or diagnosing their behavior.  Instead, the more directly we can connect our feelings to our own needs, the easier it is for others to respond to us compassionately. 

Unfortunately, most of us have never been taught to think in terms of needs.  We are accustomed to thinking about what’s wrong with other people when our needs aren’t being fulfilled.” 

“Most of us have never been taught to think in terms of needs.”  Could this be why there are so many pissed off people in the world?  Needs can’t get met if we don’t express them.  I can choose differently; I can accept responsibility for my feelings – even when the message I get is negative.  Rosenberg says we have four options for receiving negative messages:

1. Take it personally – blame ourselves
2. Fault the speaker – blame them
3. Shine the light of consciousness on our own feelings and needs
4. Shine the light of consciousness on the other person’s feelings and needs

Well!  Since number 1 and number 2 end up in my reality way too often – I must need me some more learnin’  … Hahaha!  Right up my alley.

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“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” – M. Scott Peck

How will I know I’ve learned a lesson?  When I set out to change – REALLY change, and be “all that I can be” (but not join the Army!) – How will I know I did it?

When life throws it’s normal assortment of curve balls – that’s when.

The past week brought me three opportunities.  Thank you Life for bringing them in such swift succession!  It was rough, but I didn’t strike out.  Did I see behavior change? . . a change in emotions? . . in my thinking?  Yes, yes and yes.

First Curve Ball – was hardest to see.  I got a bad cold; fever, sore throat – all the yuck.  Why the heck was I getting sick?  Wasn’t I meditating – eating right – getting my thoughts and emotions aligned?  Shouldn’t this make me bullet-proof or something?  Ok – so I decided to listen to my body; allow myself time to recover.  Yes me, the fitness freak that danced with a broken toe.  I wasn’t anxious or worried that I’d “fall off the wagon” – I will resume and maintain.  New behavior, new emotion, new thinking.  Took me a week to figure out the message, but I got it.  Chill out!

Second Curve Ball – not too hard to see; thanks to my accommodating husband.  Saturday: I was on a mission to KonMari our wardrobes (KonMari being the method recommended by Marie Kondo in her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  “Oh no you didn’t.” my husband said.  Ulp.. oh yes I did.  I had followed her advice and piled the clothes from our dressers and hall closet onto our bed.  It wasn’t pretty.  I felt bad; I should have told him how it worked when he agreed to take this on with me.  But NOOOOO – why would I do that?  I apologized and tried to make it better.  The apology was new behavior.  Seeing my part in making the mess was new behavior.  Not defending my actions and rationalizing was new behavior.  I did feel bad; but not defensive and insecure.  I know that I have a generous husband, because he rallied and KonMari’d like a pro.  Message partly received, consider others.

Third Curve Ball – saw it; yeah this one was in my face.  Sunday: I’d planned a nice outing with my (accommodating & generous) husband.  Something I thought we’d enjoy together.  Well it went off the rails; off the rails and into a ditch; with a cherry on top.  Not such a nice outing; it was a disaster.  The monster of defensiveness wanted to rear her ugly head – wanted to rationalize and excuse.  But I couldn’t.  I’d made the plans without much investigation and it was bad.  So for the second day in a row, I apologized.  This time profusely.  I was wrong and there was no defense.  Again, my generous husband wrapped me up in his arms and forgave me.  Message wholly received, consider others!

Making a decision to change is hard.  Taking action, setting a course and maintaining it with diligence will bring feedback.  Learning lessons may require some humble pie – certainly requires willing awareness.  How will I know?  I will know.

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“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”  ― Sophocles, Antigone

Have you heard . . .  

• For every action there is a reaction – Newton’s Law
• You reap what you sow – Galations 6:7
• What goes around comes around – Karma

Do we hear these things and think they don’t apply to us?  Are these sayings so commonplace they’re like white noise?  We can know “about” things, but if we take no action there is no real knowing.

Some time ago Louise Hay told me “You Can Heal Your Life” – if I paid attention to what my body tells me, take responsibility for my life and know that what I think about myself “becomes the truth.”  For me it started with the affirmation “I am willing to change.”  My early journals are filled with affirmations from Florence Scovel Shinn’s Your Word is Your Wand, and Norman Vincent Peale opened the Bible for me with The Power of Positive Thinking.  So started my walk through self-help, psychology, philosophy, theology and new age texts.  My mom got me the t-shirt “so many books so little time.”  Yep – me to a T.  Best of all is trying out what I read.  We have to do something to see something!

Recently the library introduced me to Dr. Daniel G. Amen; a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist.  According to Dr. Amen, I need to “kill the ANTS” – Automatic Negative Thoughts.  I’ve burned through three of his books, starting with Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.  Along with insights on how our brains work, is his insistence on ridding ourselves of negative thoughts – they make us “fat, slow and stupid.”  Okay!  I whole-heartedly agree.  And I love that he shows the science of his claims.

Some days it’s a challenge to be the one wearing the rose-colored glasses looking for the silver lining and the pony in the pile of poo; it seems to annoy folks.  And a balance must be struck to be empathetic to people with real issues.  I know I’ve pissed off more than a few people.  Of course I have my junk days when all I see is crap – and yes! bad things happen to good people. But I remind myself that happiness is a choice. Every day I get the chance to choose. And now Dr. Amen has shown that this is real – and the neurons in my brain REALLY are changed by how I think.  Thanks Dr. Amen!

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Michael A. Singer says in The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself “that the best way to free yourself” from the incessant noise in your head “is to step back and view” it objectively. “Don’t think about it; just notice it.”

My favorite reminder comes from my dear friend – she says:
“Thought – Word – Deed”