Most of the thoughts and behaviours that you exhibit everyday you will not be aware of.
Research has suggested that over 90% of the thoughts we have each day are exactly the same as the ones we had the day before and of those 90%, 80% are likely to be negative or unhelpful
The brain is made up of neural pathways which control our bodily functions, actions, emotions and thoughts by passing information from one neutron to another. It is thought that there are one trillion neural pathways in the brain.
Neural pathways become stronger the more times an instruction is repeated. For example, if you tell yourself that you are lazy, a neural pathway is created to relay that information, the more times you have that thought, the stronger the pathway becomes.
These pathways are then reinforced when you say these beliefs out loud and identify with them. The sentence I am lazy not only declares to the world how you see yourself but it also gives other people permission to see you in the same way and worse still define you as that when they are talking to others. This creates and energetic feedback loop which impacts on how you life your life, how you see yourself and the limiting beliefs you out on your potential.
This means that you can retrain your brain and get rid of negative or unhelpful thoughts.
To retrain your brain, you will need to change a neural pathway, you have to overwrite the previous instructions with stronger, new instructions and as before, the more they are repeated the quicker the belief becomes an automatic response of our subconscious. It can take between three weeks and six months to change a belief or behaviour but typically takes around six to eight weeks.
So. Now that we have all this knowledge about how our brain works and where our beliefs are stored and we know what we want to change. We need to work out how we are going to get rid of our unhelpful beliefs.
1. Be mindful.
Everything always comes back to this because if we are not aware of our thoughts and behaviours, they remain in our subconscious sabotaging our opportunities.
2. Be grateful.
We live in a society where we are trained to look at what we don't have in life and then told that when we have achieved it we will be more or happy or worthy.
This is not true.
No-one else can give you those things and no possession can do it either. They can only be found within. So instead of wanting what you don't have, be grateful for what you do have. If this is difficult, start small. Be grateful for whatever you are listening to this on,a roof over your head, electricity etc. You can find out more in episode 12 of this podcast.
3.Spend more time in nature.
We have become disconnected from our environment and our subconscious knows this. This then causes a feeling of meh. When we spend time in nature, we connect with the energy around us and this helps our brain and body to rebalance. This in turn reduces the production of negative hormones which are bad for our physical and mental health and activates the parasympathetic system which is our rest and repair process that is vital for our wellbeing.
4.Get to know yourself.
Who are you? What do you want your life to look like? How do you want to be?
Once you have honestly answered these questions, you can see where in life you are in conflict with this and begin to make changes. You can then use a goal setting activity, to help you plan your way forward.
This proactive approach retrains your brain and gets it on board to help you look for ways to have what you want.
5.Pay attention to your emotions.
Our thoughts create an emotional response in our body. Positive emotions are fantastic, they make us feel good, keep our energy high and help us experience the joyful state that we are designed to live in.
Negative emotions are there to bring our attention to the fact that something in our thinking is off and we need to do something about it.
6.Use mindfulness and wellbeing tools to help keep you focused.
Journaling, affirmations, visualisation, vision boards, meditation and relaxation will all help you to retrain your brain to move from a negative or unhelpful mindset to a positive and empowering one.
Don't try to work on too may things at once. Identify the one that hasn't the most damaging impact on your life.
Accept it as part of yourself and acknowledge that you are exactly where you are meant to be right now and be grateful that you have become aware of it because now is clearly the time to work on it.
We know this because it's what's happening right now and we cannot argue with reality.
Then using all the tips above, give yourself time and space to work on bringing about the changes that you want to see.
Please get in touch if you have any questions or want to start your coaching journey.
Chris.