Thought Habits

I asked a client one time to give me a list of qualities she’d like to create in a new job she was accepted for, and she listed a number of strong qualities – leadership, self-confidence, and others. In her eyes, the new job was an opportunity for her to be all these things she hadn’t gotten to be before, a chance to “start newly”.

There was one issue, so to speak… she had already grown in her confidence (enough that she could consider leaving a job she had been in for years) and in her leadership (even being recognized by her management staff for how she had grown over the past months).

We looked together at how who she was for herself was, “the kind of person who is not confident”. It wasn’t even something to consider – it was a “fact”. Her brain had already wired itself to believe that behaving differently – even with data to prove otherwise – was just not “who she was”. Said another way, it was not the default thought.

It didn’t take long to identify that while she may not yet be reliable for a given result, she is able to produce the result. If that’s the case, who is she?

Who are we for ourselves?

Enter the “thought habit”. As defined, a habit is, “A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.” [The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.] Much like physical habits, thought habits are just that – unconscious patterns of behavior, in this case, the behavior is thinking, “I’m not [confident]”. (Fill in the blank for your favorite behavior here!)

We become so used to thinking in a certain way, we do it automatically. The challenge is when we are having thoughts, we have come to think of it as “talking to ourselves” – like there’s an “I” separate but not separate from us, talking to “ourself” – a mirror reflection? Our alter ego? What does “talking to ourselves” even mean? If you try and picture it, it’s kind of absurd! And yet, it’s such an ingrained thought (a collective thought habit, if you will) no one questions it if you were to say, “I was talking to myself and….”

The reality is that we are not talking to ourselves – our brains have headed down a very well-worn path completely unconsciously. Because of the way we speak about it (“talking to ourselves”), it sounds like we have some say in where those automatic thoughts go, but the only way to really have a say is to be conscious about the thought.

In the case of my client above, having her notice she spoke as if, “I’m not confident” is a simple truth – instead of a pathway in the brain that has been set and hardened – gave her the freedom to see she’s already been acting in newly confident ways in a number of areas, with tangible results to show for it. The start of breaking the habit had already begun.

It didn’t take much to interrupt the automatic thought – the key is awareness. And much like breaking a physical habit, it takes practice, repetition. We can learn to become reliable for it (creating a new neural pathway) and yet that old pathway in the brain remains.

(For those who have read some of my other blogs, this is one of the reasons I avoid saying we “need” to take the new pathway or “need” to avoid the old pathway – we don’t need to. However, we can choose to take that new pathway. “Need” makes it about avoiding the old behavior, “choosing” makes it something we want to embrace, and much more appealing for our brain to latch on to.)

A simple visual to consider is that the old thought is like an old piece of clothing in your closet. At one time, you purchased it newly, or someone gifted it to you. You wore it. You may have even looked good in it at one time, possibly even a favorite piece. But now it’s an old look. It’s getting worn out, maybe developed some thin patches and holes. Your size may have changed, it’s stretched out, and it doesn’t fit anymore.

As you continue your path of growth and development, there will be times to shed some of the old clothing that doesn’t quite work for you anymore, even things that used to work at one time. There was nothing wrong with that piece of clothing then, and it’s time to move on from it. Try on something new – you’ll be amazed at how fabulous you look and feel.

Does it seem like your thoughts haven’t evolved in some time? Or perhaps you felt like you “got past” a thought, only to have it recur? Give me a call, let’s give you all the power you need and want for all you want to be in the world!