Why The Way We Go About Change is Wrong
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Let me take you through the five steps that people take to make a quick decision and act.
1. We have these stories, these schemas of who we are, our identity, these metaphors, and these subconscious pictures that are often in our mind.
Our schemas are beliefs about ourselves and the world that are generally so deeply embedded that we take them as fact.
For example, money is great or having more money is amazing. Or someone else might have the schema belief that money is the root of all evil.
Other schema beliefs are ,” It’s all or nothing. I have to either do it perfectly or I’m not doing it at all.”
Oftentimes those schema level beliefs, the stories that we have about ourselves, the metaphors and pictures that we have in our minds are often subconscious.
We’re not consciously thinking these things because they’re so deeply embedded that they feel natural to us.
They feel like us.
So these things both inform who we are, how we see ourselves, and the rules that we have about the world.
Collectively what these things do is they cause an emotion in our body.
2. We have an Emotion.
One is that we have these stories, schemas, pictures, and metaphors and these things subconsciously lead to an emotion.
Emotions lead to two major things:
1. Sensations.
They lead to sensations: that tightness in your chest, that feeling like fire is going through your body, and they lead to an urge to do something.
Happy, sad, angry all start with the stories, schemas, pictures, and metaphors that we have.
Those things then lead to a sensation in our body and...
2. Urges
This can be an Urge to move, or to stay still.
Which leads to the third step which is…
3. We act.
Subconsciously you have all these things playing in the background. You get an emotion and then all of a sudden you either act or decide not to act. That leads to the fourth step…
4. Logic.
We use Logic, after the fact, to explain why we acted.
This fourth step asks, "Why did I just do that?"
Again it does that automatically. The thing is you want to seem like a person that makes sense.
The key here to remember that you’re generally making up a new story. You’re making up the reason after the fact.
If you don’t see anything wrong with your action and you don’t want to make any changes then that’s where this ends.
The question becomes, what if you didn’t like your action and you actually want to make a change?
If you want to make a change there’s that fifth level.
5. Reasoning.
Reasoning is using logic to explain your logic about why you took the action.
Instead of going to the source of the stories, schemas, pictures, and metaphors, we use logic, on top of logic, to explain our actions.
With using reasoning the theory is that if we can better understand our logic and change our logic then we’ll change our actions.
The problem is, how many people have tried to change things that they know would be good for them and it doesn’t work?
When it comes to people with exercising, with sleeping better, with eating healthier.
How many things do people actually want to change and they know all the logical reasons, they know all the reasons, but they don’t do it?
But in our society we believe that if we just had that logic, if we knew that reason, then we would change our action.
Now I’m not saying that this is a wrong way to change but what I am saying is this is definitely the harder way to change.
The Easier and Quicker Route to Change
The easier and quicker route in this case is to actually work on what causes the emotions to begin with, which is going to the story, schemas, pictures, and metaphors.
If you can change those Story, Schemas, Pictures, and Metaphors then you can change...
Your emotions, and if you change your emotions then it’s easy to change...
How you act. If you change how you act, and you like it, then the...
logic will back you up, because you are taking the actions you want.
All you need then is to explain how you were able to make those changes, even if you had a problem for a long time, with Reasoning.
That’s usually the issue with change in our society today.
We think that we have to understand all our reasons, our logic. We have to go back and understand our childhood, or trauma, so that we can understand why we started this thing to begin with and then when we know that, then we’ll change our actions.
Don’t get me wrong, this is nice.
But if you want to change your eating, so you eat more vegetables, or you want to be more consistent with your workouts, maybe change the more obvious stuff.
Work on changing the stories and pictures that you have in your mind that are spurring those emotions to begin with.
If you want to learn how to change those Stories, Schemas, Pictures and Metaphors, on a consistent basis, and the Tools to do so, reach out for a Free Consulting Coaching Call Today: