I’m going out on a limb by saying this but change is hard. We are all creatures of habit. To get ourselves to do something different can be equivalent to running a marathon without first training for it. Think how many times you’ve ever tried the “white knuckle” approach to something. How successful were you?

The problem with changing our behaviors is not in our desire to do so. The problem is that we’re dealing with our two minds. The conscious mind, often called the rational mind and the unconscious mind or our emotional nature.

To change anything in our lives, these two minds have to be in agreement.

The conscious or rational mind is that part of us that is analytical and can delay gratification for long term goals or payoffs. The unconscious or emotional mind deals with pain and pleasure and is a pleasure seeking being.

The unconscious mind is interested in instant gratification. It wants things to be easy and quick. And it is the part of us that gets things done. The unconscious mind easily over rides the conscious mind when it comes to getting us to do things. The reason is that most of our behaviors are done unconsciously or without our awareness. We just do them without thinking about it.

We’ve actually created neural pathways in the brain which run automatically whenever it’s time to do a specific behavior. You don’t have to think about how to overeat or brush your teeth….you just do it or you could say your unconscious mind does it.

So every time you try and get your conscious mind to change a behavior through will power, you are attempting to override a neural pathway that is practically set in stone. After a while, we actually get worn down by our own self supervision. How many times have you attempted to do something and just got fed up with the constant monitoring of your behavior? We can only do this so long before we are exhausted.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight through dieting you know what I mean. Every morsel you put in your mouth you have to think about and weigh the pros and cons.

Another reason change is hard is because we keep changing our minds! One minute our rational mind thinks we want to lose the weight or stop drinking or get that report done and then we’re thinking about that piece of cake left in the kitchen or just one little drink won’t hurt.

So the problem isn’t that you are lazy or lack motivation. The problem is the battle between the conscious and unconscious mind. And to get these two in alignment, you have to restructure those neural pathways.  

Recently, scientists have discovered what they call Brain Plasticity where our brain cells or neurons are constantly making new pathways. This means that your brain can change! You can create the neural pathways of your choice.

Change can then become quite easy because you’re creating on the unconscious level. So the next time you go to repeat an unwanted behavior, you find yourself doing the desired behavior. This is part of the research that went into my development of the Neural Pathway Restructuring™. I’ve used it with several different habitual behaviors such as smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, bulimia, picking, OCD, PTSD, anxiety disorders and Tourette’s Syndrome.  I also use a form of it in many of my workshops to assist groups to let go of limiting beliefs they may have about themselves and their ability to be, do or have what they want.

If you’re interested in learning more about Neural Pathway Restructuring™, please go to: NeuralPathwayRestructuring.com