There’s a reason why we say ‘old habits die hard’; we don’t really want to change…..Well we do, but our brain doesn’t!
Change is uncomfortable and it slows down your brain’s response rate, and since your brain is built for speed, it will resist any form of change.
My analogy to describe change is that your natural responses (neurones) are like sports cars, travelling at 200 miles an hour on an empty 10-lane highway in your brain. Any change, is like seeing a deer, jump onto the highway in front of your beautiful car. You need to brake and avoid crashing into the deer, and take your sports car off the highway, onto rough terrain, which is bumpy and very uncomfortable.
Each time you recognise yourself falling into old habits or response patterns, you will see that deer on the highway and you will need to slow down and veer off-road. The bumpy, grassy, path eventually does become smoother, the more you drive on it, but it will never be as smooth as driving on the highway.
Without change, you stay stuck in old patterns and you will get the same result, but how willing are you to embrace change.
Learn to slow down and reflect, so that you can understand where your natural responses take you. Ask yourself ‘what happened’ in a situation and ‘what you could have done differently’? Get in touch with your feelings. How did the situation make you feel? Does a specific person ‘bring out the worst in you’?
You may find it really interesting to understand where your ‘programmed responses’ stem from and how you can take a more emotionally intelligent stance to your next encounter.
Good luck and let me know if I can support you!
HELEN MARTIN BLOG 