The habit of habit
With 2007 looming on the horizon and the thought of New Year’s Resolutions close behind, I thought it might be useful to look at how and why we form habits and sometimes can’t easily change them. It’s a marathon posting, but hopefully worth your while to read it.
Falling into ‘the habit’ of doing something is effortless and insidious. When we do something once, twice, a few times, we’re on the road to that thought-pattern or activity becoming ‘habituated’ – which is the psychological buzzword for it.
Swami Vivekananda, the famous Hindu Monk
who brought to the World Parliament of Religions in 1863, the highest
philosophical teachings of India, once said that introducing a new thought into
a brain is like pushing a needle through the grey matter. It’s a simple and
elegant analogy that finds validation in the latest neuro scientific thinking.
When we’re exposed to a brand new concept or learning or we want to start a new pattern of behaviour, an interesting process gets underway. It’s the equivalent of taking a machete and hacking, with much effort and difficulty, a rudimentary pathway through a jungle. But once that path has been created and we start to walk or traffic it with any degree of regularity, the surrounding foliage begins to die back, the surface flattens and what was originally a major trek, now becomes a comfortable stroll. Over time, the pathway widens and it will eventually, if it becomes the default route for thinking or behaviour, become a superhighway. Once it achieves that status, breaking a habit or changing a thought pattern or behaviour becomes extremely difficult.
Neurologically, what’s happening is that a nerve pathway or Axon, has developed. It literally looks like a little tree branch growing off the nerve network in the brain. In response to the new information or correlation stimulus, the branch will ‘grow’ in order to process and retain that new information. As further detail is added or the concept is revisited, so ‘twigs’ or tiny branches will sprout from the end of that axon. These are called Dendrites. Their role is to permit connectivity and networking across little gaps called synapses, with other dendrites in the brain. So one piece of information is connected to another and another and the total telecommunications infrastructure becomes infinitely more complex, rich and valuable. If only because a concept or problem can new be ‘round-tripped’ via the most astonishing knowledge and experience base in order to generate ideas or solutions.
Frequently trafficked dendrites can be seen in modern day PET (positron emission tomography) scans linked to computers almost as ‘hubs’ for information dissemination and networking. They become more complex, grow ‘thicker’ and evolve in response to regular usage. So they move from being the original rough pathway hacked through the jungle into paved pathways, highways and even information superhighways. The very effortlessness of travelling those superhighways is what underpins habit. It’s now become an automated process. No effort is required. And the pattern is therefore sometimes very difficult to alter or break.
How to change habit? It’s suppression vs. sublimation
Trying to crush a thought-pattern or habit will simply lead to you
giving it even more attention than before. I often play a mind-game with people
when illustrating this point. Try it: I want you to think of a cute little pink
pig. House-trained, sweet-smelling, great personality, people-friendly and what
I call ‘ko-laal.’ Meaning she’s kosher and halaal and the good news is nobody’s
ever going to eat her anyhow! She’s the cutest little thing, squealing with
delight and excitement as you tickle her. Got a good picture and feel of her?
Now that you have, I don’t want you to think of her again. Not even
once. This is very important. As you continue reading, please have no thought,
whatsoever, of piggy. OK? Do NOT
think of the pig.
Suppression and sublimation
There are only two choices available to you when you’re trying to change
thoughts. The one is suppression, or crushing of the thought, feeling or
behaviour that is troubling you. The other is sublimation – converting it to a higher value.
Re-framing it. Re-directing it.
A question: Having trouble getting rid of the pig? You’ll never get rid of her by trying to put
the thought of her out of your mind. The more you think, ‘no thoughts of piggy’
the more intensely will you be
thinking about her. You’re attempting ‘crushing’ or ‘suppression,’ and it
doesn’t work.
Focussing on the negative
It’s like trying to get rid of anger. You think, “I must not be angry. I am no longer angry. I refuse
to let you make me angry!” All you’re doing is focussing on anger and yet more
anger. The energy and impetus you give to the weakness, when you try to crush it, is enormous.
It’s the same with a weight problem. Your mind will be obsessed with
food, fat-producing foods, over-tight clothes and kilojoule-cutting, 24x7. What
chance do you think you have of getting your body to co-operate with such an
approach to a weight-loss program? The focus has got to shift to the outcome of
a healthier-feeling, lighter-footed, compliment-receiving, more mobile and
physically agile you.
When that’s the vision or your end destination, it starts to make sense
to your subconscious. Instead of self-hate, it turns into self-fulfilment. I
hope I’ve convinced you that suppression won’t work. So be prepared to try the
alternative, which is, sublimation.
Au
revoir Miss Piggy
Think of the pig again. This
time you’ll be able to let go of her
if you wish. Think of and get into your mind, the image of a beautiful, crisp,
red apple, with a little stalk and a green leaf on it. Keep this in your mind.
This is an example of the process of sublimation. As you hold on to the image
of the apple, you’ll find that Miss Piggy has disappeared. Except for one guy
in a seminar who said, “But the pig ate the apple!” Well, we put him into a therapy
program (kidding!).
You have a huge archive of resident patterns, emotional video and audio
tapes, memory sticks, CD ROMs, DVDs, and other records in the gallery of your
subconscious mind. In most cases, they’ve been there for a long time. Trying to
evict them will be a painstaking, unproductive and almost always unsuccessful
process.
Befriending the enemy
What you need to do is befriend the ‘enemy.’ Here’s how. Start using the
thoughts, emotions or behaviour that you no longer want as a ‘trigger’ or
catalyst for reminding you to do something different.
Example: The next time you have a negative, self-defeating thought,
instead of thinking, ‘No! I must not
think like this!’, simply use it as a memory jog for switching to a positive
alternative. As the negative thought arises, you accept it as an assistant and
collaborator, and use its arrival to trigger an opposite and positive thought.
Let’s say you’re snappy and abrupt with people. Instead of trying to crush that
response, what you do the instant you become aware of the snappiness surfacing,
is to sublimate it with a thought like, ‘I’m at heart, a caring, supportive
person.’ This will progressively start to re-write or over-write some of those
archive memory and info-storage devices. The more frequently you use the
negative as a memory jog, the quicker will be the over-writing process. As you
may know, when writing to a (re-writable) CD, you can choose to write new
content to a file of the same name. It’s called over-writing. So you don’t have
to erase old documents. You simply start
recording your new and desired patterns over them.
Character
vs. temperament – Prof. Robert Cloninger
Dr. Robert Cloninger has done fascinating work on the relationship between ‘temperament’ (his language) and character. He describes temperament as what we’re born with. The heredity, DNA, chromosome ‘fixed’ stuff. Not much (other than plastic surgery!) that we can do about big bums, saggy boobs, three chins or frizzy hair. As Prof. Harry Seftel would say, ‘You just chose your parents badly’. But on the character front, we can do a great deal. Each time we make choices we strengthen or weaken that character. It’s very much a function of intellect – which has little or nothing to do with education and academic prowess. Someone may have little formal learning but be blessed with a fine intellect and wisdom. The intellect – described in Sanskrit as ‘Buddhi’, meaning ‘the illumined one’ is our mechanism for discernment and discrimination. Not of the racial or social kind, but between good choices and less good ones. Unless we’ve irretrievably crossed the moral and ethical line, a lower function of the intellect will alert us to the fact that we’re about to do something unfair, dishonest or unacceptable. The intellect itself is the highest function of the mind of which we can be aware before we reach the pure spiritual being that I believe we are.
The
biofeedback reciprocity of behaviour into DNA
Many years ago, I wrote hypothesising that if our genes and DNA could pre-determine part at least of how we look and behave, then surely our behaviour, actions and thoughts (the character component) must have a reciprocal effect on our genes and DNA as well. Meaning that we’re writing or re-writing code on the DNA as we live our way through life. A software revise or upgrade if you will. And when we procreate we pass on that updated version of the code to the next generation.
A few months ago I was engaged in an interesting discussion with psychiatrist Dr. David Benn. He said that medical science today accepts that view as being both logical and correct. Eastern psychology has long held that the mind (the software which uses the brain as its hardware) creates the body. Interesting convergence between Eastern philosophy and Western psychology.
I hope 2007 is a year of constructive and positive change for you!
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