Good morning, people of the blog!
Wouldn’t you know it, I had some conversations this week. Some real doozies.
“Why do I keep doing that, though?”
“How come this keeps happening to me?”
“They are SUCH jerks!!!”
You know the ones. Trying to make sense of why life is hard and why some people just seem really, REALLY committed to making it that bit more sucky. Sometimes they are pretty obvious little bundles of sour breath-ed, pinch mouth-ed delight. Who just cannot seem to keep their selves and their sewage-flavoured opinions TO themselves. Sometimes they are subtler though. Like the toilet with flowers in it to keep it smelling fresh, but the previous person neglected to flush their curry induced… mudslide of a natural disaster… All the more offensive and off putting because of the flower-scent/curry-shit contrast, right?
Give me upfront jerk-ness any day. You can at least brace for that.
Anyway…
Those conversations.
These were conversations with people who were, in no uncertain terms, fed up with at least 1 aspect of their lives. Weren’t quiet about it either. And not for the first time.
Talking people through the hows and whys of their feelings, how they go to that place, what its triggering in them, why it matters to acknowledge and adjust to those triggers, why that person who did this to them is for future reference to be known as a perpetrator of war atrocities blah blah blah, is how any of this starts. If we don’t understand why something sucks, it’s waaaay harder to challenge and change it to not suck.
So we have a whole bunch of things that we want to remove about how we operate on a few levels, because that way life isn’t quite as brutal.
Great.
So, we do.
Which is cool for a while.
But, those thoughts and feelings and behaviours comes back. Harder.
Rude, right?!? But why? Why would we do this to ourselves? Surely no ones THAT invested in self sabotage that they’d literally take back the “curry-shit in a flower-scented toilet” of an ex of theirs? No ones THAT dumb, right?
This… is where it gets a bit awkward.
We totally are. Not intentionally, admittedly. But we are.
Well, that’s not true. Some of you is. An unfortunately large amount, actually.
The part of you that can intellectually acknowledge that going back to said curry-shit ex is a terrible idea isn’t. But in so many of us, that’s not the part of us that’s calling the shots. (Honestly, you’d think wed be nicer to ourselves…)
The bit that IS calling the shot is the giant chunks of brain that have progressively built up all this neurological wiring around things being easier if we just do the same thing every day forever until death. Thoughts, feelings, actions, people, environment, tv show re-runs, topics of conversation that are the same thing just a slightly different audience.
I said dumb before. That’s not quite right.
Its… efficient.
That whole meat popsicle you pilot around every day? it doesn’t want to spend a shred more energy and effort that it absolutely, minimally has to. See? Efficient.
The problem is, if your body and brain has built up these auto pilot behaviours around stuff that makes you feel shitty, well, you are definitely going to feel shitty. And think that’s normal. To the point where you don’t even notice the shitty. So you can get on with being “efficient”… yay…
So, we can uncover all this old “efficient”, “curry-shit” stuff in our patterns of thought and behaviour, which is a very brilliant start. Nothing changes in the personal development department without self-awareness.
So, we make changes. Cool.
Hands up how many out there have found those sticking? Just you Miriam? I bet I know why they did for you, but well get to that in a sec.
So, nearly everyone went back to old shit.
Guess why? The little part of you that’s not dumb, that can SEE the problem, is fighting against large chunks of brain with many years of practice at being “efficient”… And it is stubborn af. Evolutionary biology is tougher than a single moment in which we realise the old mate curry-shit is definitely a curry-shit, sorry to say.
With me so far?
Great. Now we get to talk about emotions…
The reason your brain seared in those thought patterns so freaking hard to turn life into ground-hog day? Those moments, and the thoughts and behaviours we have that we had in response to them, are seared in by EMOTIONS. Those feelings, they make your brain take notice and go “this shit is important, put that in the vault!!! And now, to build all sorts of stuff, like attitudes, behaviours and coping mechanisms, around it to make sure we NEVER forget how important it was”.
Wasn’t that nice of us? Especially when that shit was… not fun. That’s how the efficiency stuff gets us. I mean, its is trying to help, honest it is, but it doesn’t add much to proceedings if we want to change things up a bit. Which is why I called it dumb before.
So, we wake up to things we don’t like. We want to change. But there’s all that shit-curry based iceberg under the surface with emotionally reinforced armour. That’s why change doesn’t stick.
Its all well and good to want to remove a behaviour we no longer want. But if we don’t replace it with anything, our noggin refuses to go into vegetable mode, so it goes back to default curry-shit settings.
Long winded way of saying if you don’t replace what you remove, nothing happens, wasn’t it?
But, that’s what it is.
If you want to change, to feel something different, its not good enough to remove it. you need to replace it, with something equally emotionally powerful.
And, unfortunately, this is the hard bit when we’ve been buried in curry-shit for so long. Its REALLY hard to feel something different to reinforce new behaviours that we do want without something positive to burn that shit in and make the brain go “Alright, fine! Just when we were getting into the swing of things, building up some real momentum, orders are telling us that now THIS is important… put it in the vault, throw that old shit away. But… not all of it, we may possibly need it for educational purposes to train new recruits later.” Or something like that. Who knows if brain cells really get that jaded? Neuroplasticity says not, but its more entertaining to think otherwise.
As always though, that replace idea still boils down to the answers to those age-old questions I ask.
Who are you?
What do you want?
Or maybe, even better, who do you want to be? And what does that you want?
The reason you want to be that person, the reason you want those things, is basically because you think you’d feel good, or at least better. So, what if you used that feeling you’re imagining having as that version of you to build in those thoughts and behaviours that will get you to that place. Hell, even just a moment when you felt good that’s already happened.
Those feelings, those life affirming, personal worth giving, feelings, are our secret weapon against the curry-shit of the past. Otherwise, it stays just a good idea that has no emotional backing and wont even make a dent. It might even make it harder to try next time. But that’s another blog from way back.
Use those emotions. They get things done. But pick one that serves you, rather than hurts you.
You get to choose.
It takes practice. And time. Choose to practice. Choose to take the time to practice.
Remove, and Replace.
You will win.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“Don’t be a set of memorized behaviours!” Syed Sharukh
Comments