Anth Quinn

Would you be surprised to hear that one of the most empowering things you can do to take control of your life is to admit that you have almost no control?

Now this might sound strange coming from someone who is dedicating his time to helping you to take more control and empower yourself to overcome those bad habits and create a life you love.

But let me explain.

Most people think they’re in moment by moment control of their lives.

This might be true or not it depends who you think you are!

If you think you are your conscious thought patterns then it may come as a surprise to realise that you actually have very little conscious control of anything you do!

You are almost a robot and admitting this to yourself could be one of the most empowering changes you can make in your life.

Now this may sound a little wacky or even insulting (is that a program I’ve just triggered?) but I’d like you to suspend disbelief and imagine you are a robot running habitual patterns who occasionally wakes and gets some perspective on life before dropping back into automatic patterns of behaviour.

From this perspective the best way of changing is to admit that in your moments of awareness to admit that you will not remember to do something new while running an old program in your day-to-day life so you can design and run a new program instead.

How do you set up and run new more empowering and energising programs in your life?

Well, this is a big subject but here are some basic steps to get you started and learning from your own results as you have fun playing with these ideas.

• 1. Recognise the behaviour you wish to change; at this point it’s important to understand that behaviours are neither good nor bad they are simply useful or not in achieving a desired outcome. One of the most common mistakes I see is people trying to change behaviours without deciding on a desired outcome! Remember the outcome comes first and then you can decide on the behaviour that will achieve it.
• 2. Identify the trigger; now this might not be that easy if you do it sitting in your chair pondering your life. But it will be much easier if you just begin to notice when you are doing the old behaviour and run it back in your head, what did you think, see, hear or feel just before you began the behaviour? Don’t try and change it just notice.
• 3. Design a new behaviour that you would prefer to do instead; by design I mean plan in detail. Begin by noticing the trigger and actually write down the steps you intend to take and then imagine running through them in your head.
• 4. Do it! Once you can do it in your head, then it’s time to go through life and begin to be aware of the trigger and allow it to trigger that new behaviour. It’s even easier if you begin with something you do at the same time each day.
• 5. Reinforce completion of the desired behaviour;For this new pattern to become and unconscious habit you’re going to keep it up for around thirty days, and I’ve found the best way of doing this is to keep a record of successful completion in a way that FEELS GOOD to you when you complete it. I and a lot of my clients have enjoyed creating and using graphs etc. You can make it more fun by getting other people involved too.

If you’re a parent why not get your kids to help you create a graph?

The key is to link some pleasure as soon as possible after completion of the new behaviour. The more pleasure you design into your system the easier this will be set up and run those new programs.

If you think this sounds a little systematic then that’s a good thing because the more you systemise the habits that put you in control of your patterns the easier it will all become.

If you prefer to not think of yourself as a robot running habitual learned patterns that’s up to you and having said that I don’t expect you to believe me. If you’re interested in gaining more control of yourself in life then just start on some small behavioural change and give it a go. You’ll soon recognise that your small successes are the best form of motivation.

If you slip up and forget to do it, remember you’re only human, just give it another go and get started again. After all you might even develop the habit of getting back on track when you lose your way occasionally, and that’s a good skill to learn on the way!

And remember to have plenty of fun on the way, as a robot you know the importance of having your batteries recharged :o)

So how does it feel to see yourself as a robot and why not tell me what you think about this idea?

Are you insulted, empowered?

Have fun,

Anth.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.