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Thanksgiving is not just for Thanksgiving
I know, we all do it. Give appreciation once or twice a year, on special occasions. Pay more attention to the ones closet to our hearts on birthdays and anniversaries etc.
But heres the thing
Showing gratefulness and gratitude is known to be one of the key factors in personal happiness.
We all know that giving gives us so much more pleasure than receiving, not that receiving isn't nice. But against giving, seeing the pleasure on that persons face, receiving doesn't come close.
Reminding ourselves to feel the gratitude for all the good things in life creates a wonderful cascade of feel good hormones throughout the body.
and to coin a well used phrase with no data to back it up, “studies have shown” those hormones are more than just “feel good”
It turn out that they are actually beneficial for us. They boost our immune systems and actually boost our health as well.
Of course changing the habits of a lifetime is always a task, one we fail at most of the time, but its possible. Heres one that might just be possible.
A while back I was having a meal with a small group of complete strangers, bar one friend.
Before we started the meal our host asked us all to join him and hold hands and spend a few moments , internally remembering, some of the things we have to be grateful for in our lives.
1 minute spent at each meal recalling and reminding yourself of what you have to be grateful for will not only make you feel good, raise your spirits and create a positive mindset but it could also make you live a longer healthier life.
Its certainly worth a try.
Interiority
Thousands of books have been published, countless articles written, 43 million on google alone, all trying to find their answer to the perennial question.
Self Confidence, can I feel good about myself? 
For most people they spend their time looking outside in an attempt to make a comparison with others and in doing so hope to place themselves on a par or better with others.
This leads us to two strategies
One group practice Superiority.
By believing that we might be superior to others we attempt to boost a flagging or damaged ego. This strategy is of course based in low self esteem and low self worth in the first place and can lead to arrogance. Not the most positive of human attributes.
The second strategy is inferiority.
Being keenly aware of our own failings or shortcomings and comparing ourselves to our perception of others. Those who seem to do everything better than we do, and then trying desperately to live up to that perception.
This of course is the other side of low self esteem and low self worth.
The thing is this:
Looking outside, seeking in someway to find the approval of others in order to make our own selves feel better is a zero sum game. You cannot win this one for two reasons.
1 Your perception of others is always wrong. You cannot know another person, whats gong on inside them, what their inner feelings are, because
2 They are also playing the zero sum game as well, just like you.
What you see, your perception is their outward face, their attempts to hide their own inner fears and insecurities, their coping strategies for not appearing like they feel inside.
So any attempt to find approval from others is founded in this misconception.
The only way forward towards great self esteem and true self confidence is in self acceptance.
Play the Interiority game
Life is all about growth, Its about learning and progressing, changing, improving.
The only comparison that has any value is comparing you with yourself. Accepting that you are who you are, warts and all.
You are unique, in so many ways, revel in this.
Accepting that everyone around you is playing the same game, no matter what they appear to be doing on the outside. Its all an illusion, A mask, worn to disguise the inner feelings.
So, if we all play the game, we are all equal in that. No better or worse but just different. Yes some have talents in one area but maybe not another, just like you.
Life is an experiment of one. You, unique, and its never going to be repeated.
Learning to just relax into who you are, with all your perceived imperfections, but still good enough is the key to true self confidence.
You don't need to be the best at anything with the exception of one thing.
The best you can be.
If you are not good at something, stop doing it, it only makes you feel worse. Go find something you can be good at.
Heres the thing, we all have something that we are good at, you just might not have recognised that yet in yourself.
Learning to be the authentic you is the key skill to the self confidence game.
Being comfortable with not being good at something.
Stop saying yes when you really mean no. be true to your self
Stop looking for approval outside yourself, you don't need their approval because its not real anyway.
Making decisions out of fear will always be wrong. Fear of what might happen or fear of what might not happen. Just do what you feel is right
Allow yourself to be vulnerable, People love others who show their vulnerability, we all have it and being vulnerable is a strength not a weakness. Our hearts go out to people when they show their vulnerability.
Remember life is a journey of self discovery. You were not born the finished article, you didn't become it in adulthood and the chances are you'll still be unfinished at the end. So try and enjoy the lessons, we are all in the same classroom together.
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This article is based on the work of Carolyn McHugh.
Hanging out
There are two ways to grow yourself and get great results.
1 Work on yourself.
Read great self growth material, watch videos that inspire you, go on workshops to experience new ways of doing and thinking. Meditate to find that inner peace. Take a class to add to your skill set. There are so many ways to work on yourself and you should do as many as you can.
2. Be aware of your environment
Most of us are the sum total, or the average of all those who we hang out with. Who we spend our time with dictates almost 90 % of what we think, our attitudes and often how we feel.
Mix with a crowd that has average ambitions and thats most likely what you will end up with average expectations.
My life long mentor said this to me many years ago.
If you meet a super successful person, go up, introduce yourself and shake their hand, success rubs off them and onto you.
What he meant, both literally and metaphorically is that the more you mix with highly successful people the more their way of thinking, being, acting becomes a part of who you are.
Its inevitable.
The power of negativity
People with a negative outlook are infectious. Take a look around you and see what happens when things don't go right. Some person will start moaning and complaining and before you know it others will join in. Negativity is twice as strong as positivity.
This means you have to take control and remove yourself from negative talk. Don't allow it into yourself, don't expose yourself to it. Don't let others use your ears as trashcans for their rubbish.
We know that success comes to those who first expect it so there is no place for negativity in a success mindset.
Live in a positive environment
Gravitate towards the people that you want to emulate. surround yourself with positivity. rub shoulders with successful people. Talk to them, ask them questions, seek out their advice, take on a mentor.
Successful people have already been there, they know what it takes, they know the pitfalls and the hacks. You can only learn from them by being closer to them, but most of all you pick up their mental process, their mentality, their attitudes.
Treat yourself like a seed.
A seed needs the right of soil to grow in, it needs sunlight and water to nourish it to allow it to grow tall and healthy.
What conditions are you currently planting your seed in?
Self mastery is not only mastering yourself but also your environment.
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10 Simple Habits Proven to Make You Happier
Self-acceptance may be the Key to happiness help reduce stress and feelings of depression significantly.
A survey of 5,000 people found a strong link between self-acceptance and happiness, despite the fact that it’s a habit not frequently practised.
A lack of self acceptance leads to feelings of low self esteem, low self worth and a lack of self confidence.
A lack of self confidence is the single biggest factor in holding people back from finding their true potential
The study identified 10 habits that contributed to happiness
Here are the 10 habits, the scores were how often they performed each habit:
Giving: do things for others — 7.41
Relating: connect with people — 7.36
Exercising: take care of your body — 5.88
Appreciating: notice the world around — 6.57
Trying out: keep learning new things — 6.26
Direction: have goals to look forward to — 6.08
Resilience: find ways to bounce back — 6.33
Emotion: take a positive approach — 6.74
Acceptance: be comfortable with who you are — 5.56
Meaning: be part of something bigger — 6.38
Where do you score on these 10 category's?
(You’ll notice that the first letters spell out the words GREAT DREAM.)
The survey showed that one of the largest associations between these happy habits and reported happiness was for self-acceptance which strongly was the second lowest category practiced
Increase your self-acceptance
Here are three ways to boost your self-acceptance, as suggested by the researchers:
“1. Be as kind to yourself as you are to others. See your mistakes as opportunities to learn. Notice things you do well, however small.
2. Ask a trusted friend or colleague to tell you what your strengths are or what they value about you.
3. Spend some quiet time by yourself. Tune in to how you’re feeling inside and try to be at peace with who you are.”
I really like this piece from Dr. Jeremy Dean It explains how we fool ourselves more easily than we think we fool others. The way froward to feeling great about yourself is through personal authenticity.
The Truth About Self-Deception
Can we pull the wool over our own eyes or do we see through our mind games?
In theory the one person we should never, ever, lie to is ourselves. Surely lying to ourselves is counter-productive? Like calmly and deliberately shooting yourself in the foot or taking a hot toasting fork and plunging it into your eye?
But look around and it’s not hard to spot the tell-tale symptoms of self-deception in other people. So perhaps we are also deceiving ourselves in ways we can’t clearly perceive? But is that really possible and would we really believe the lies that we ‘told’ ourselves anyway? That’s what Quattrone & Tversky (1984) explored in a classic social psychology experiment published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Lies, damn lies and psychologists
Any study of self-deception is going to involve a fair amount of bare-faced lying, and Quattrone & Tversky’s (1984) research was no different. They recruited 38 students who were told they were going to take part in a study about the “psychological and medical aspects of athletics”. Not true, in fact the researchers were going to trick participants into thinking that how long they could submerge their arms in cold water was diagnostic of their health status, when really it showed just how ready people are to deceive themselves. This is how they did it.
The participants were first asked to plunge their arms into cold water for as long as they could. The water was pretty cold and people could only manage this for 30 or 40 seconds. Then participants were given some other tasks to do to make them think they really were involved in a study about athletics. They had a go on an exercise bike and were given a short lecture about life expectancy and how it related to the type of heart you have. They were told there were two types of heart:
Type I heart: associated with poorer health, shorter life expectancy and heart disease.
Type II heart: associated with better health, longer life expectancy and low risk of heart disease.
Half were told that people with Type II hearts (apparently the ‘better’ type) have increased tolerance to cold water after exercise while the other half that it decreased tolerance to cold water. Except of course this was all lies only made up to make participants think that how long they could hold their arm under water was a measure of their health, with half thinking cold-tolerance was a good sign and half thinking it was a bad sign.
Type II heart: associated with better health, longer life expectancy and low risk of heart disease.
Half were told that people with Type II hearts (apparently the ‘better’ type) have increased tolerance to cold water after exercise while the other half that it decreased tolerance to cold water. Except of course this was all lies only made up to make participants think that how long they could hold their arm under water was a measure of their health, with half thinking cold-tolerance was a good sign and half thinking it was a bad sign.
Now time for the test: participants had another go at putting their arms into the cold water for as long as they could. The graph below shows the average results before and after all the blatant lying (in the name of science of course!):
As you can see the experimental manipulation had a strong effect. People who thought it was a sign of a healthy heart to hold their arms underwater for longer did just that, while those who believed the reverse all of a sudden couldn’t take the cold. That’s all well and good, but were these people really lying to themselves or just the experimenters and did they believe those lies?
Hook, line and sinker
After the arm-dunking each participant was asked whether they had intentionally changed the amount of time they held their arms underwater. Of the 38 participants, 29 denied it and 9 confessed, but not directly. Many of the 9 confessors claimed the water had changed temperature. It hadn’t of course, this was just a way for people to justify their behaviour without directly facing their self-deception.
All the participants were then asked whether they believed they had a healthy heart or not. Of the 29 deniers, 60% believed they had the healthier type of heart. However of the confessors only 20% thought they had the healthier heart. What this suggests is that the deniers were more likely to be truly deceiving themselves and not just trying to cover up their deception. They really did think that the test was telling them they had a healthy heart. Meanwhile the confessors tried to tell a lie back to the experimenter (seems only fair!), but privately the majority acknowledged they were deceiving themselves.
This experiment is neat because it shows the different gradations of self-deception, all the way up to its purest form, in which people manage to trick themselves hook, line and sinker. At this level people think and act as though their incorrect belief is completely true, totally disregarding any incoming hints from reality.
So what this study suggests is that for many people self-deception is as easy as pie. Not only will many people happily lie to themselves if given a reason, but they will only look for evidence that confirms their comforting self-deception, and then totally believe in the lies they are telling themselves.
Explains a lot, don’t you think?
This post by Jeremy Dean originally appeared on PsyBlog — a website (run entirely by Dean) dedicated to exploring the science of psychology by examining new, interesting, and exciting peer-reviewed psychology research.
FEAR The destroyer of achievement
There are all types of fears, from spiders to fear of public speaking, the commonest fear of all. They all have the same features in the way we respond whatever the trigger.
An American woman known to medical science as SM has a rare condition. The part of her brain where we experience fear, The Amygdala, is now missing. The Amygdala is that part of us that is designed to highjack your slow conscious thoughts and replace them with instant, unconscious reactions. When a tiger appears before you on a path , you don't need to think about what to do next , its either fight or run and you need to do one of these right now.
But SM has a unique reaction to scary things, she can be amused or curious about them but she is never frightened, always remaining calm.
One evening she was attacked in a park, a man held a knife to her throat and threatened her. At that moment a church bell tolled in the distance and with absolute calmness SM told the man, “If he was going to kill me you will have to go through my guardian angels first”.
This spooked the guy so much he ran off. Next evening she walked through the park as usual with out a care in the world.
FEAR you see exists only as a concept in our minds. Although what SM experienced was actual danger, almost all our fears are just
Fantasied
Events
Appearing
Real
(FEAR)
We create sophisticated images, scenarios and fantasies in our conscious minds that stimulate the amygdala and this in turn creates the appropriate physical responses. It stresses us with a raised heart rate, increased breathing and lots of adrenaline to create strength that will enable us to either fight or flight.
Daily worry and stress in our lives does exactly the same, it stimulates the amygdala. We worry about that report we are late with, is our child ok out on their own? Will I be affected by the layoffs? Our response to these non lethal events is the same as any real and present danger, in the mind its all the same.
The mind cannot tell the difference between a fantasy or a reality, its all just mental projection, its is just thoughts. We behave as if the event is actually happening, even if its never happened yet or could happen in a weeks time. Almost all that we fear is never actually going to happen at all, we just have a habit of pretending that it is.
If it does come to pass, it’s usually nowhere near as bad as our fantasy and we deal with it as all our fears come to nothing. Even if it actually happens it somehow doesn't seem as bad as we had thought. Our minds are capable of creating horrific scenarios that a hollywood director would be proud of, they would love to be able to elicit these amazing reactions in people
Fear take place in our sub conscious minds and transfers to our consciousness. One solution is first to be aware that your fears are rising and then to consciously take stock and be in the moment of now, where nothing is actually happening. Count to ten staying in the now and then asses how you feel, if the fear is still rising, remind yourself you are ok right now, nothing is actually happening, count to 10 and reassess
By staying in the now we stay in control and when we are consciously in control our amygdala has no job to do if there is no real danger present.
What the Mind of man can Conceive he can Believe and Achieve
This was said by W Clement Stone nearly 100 years ago and repeated ad infinitum by every self development guru, writer and talker ever since. Yet today the average person still does not believe it to be true.
For most people the Law of Accident applies. Things happen and I respond.
The truth remains though, every study of successful, happy people has shown that when you decide to take control of your thoughts and make them what you want them to be, things in your life start to fall into the pattern you set for them.
Is this the Law of Attraction at work? Do we draw into ourselves things that are consistent with our dominant thoughts? Or is this a combination of becoming focused and directed and then seeking out that which we desire for our futures and in doing so we find people, places and situations that are consistent with that which we are seeking?
My personal experience is that when we focus our thoughts we begin to see much of what was before us that was previously unseen. Our actions and behaviours alter and in doing so we open ourselves to others that are also consistent with our actions and behaviours. In doing so we create the very conditions that we have been desiring.
"Look and ye shall find" a wise sage once said and he may have had a thing there. All things are possible in a universe of endless possibilities, we just need to open ourselves to the possibility that it can be or happen. An angry man can see no beauty so beauty does not exist in his world.
Self mastery is the art of controlling your thoughts and when you master those you master the art of deciding what happens in your life.
5 Great Reasons to Embrace Change
So many people are afraid of change. The very idea that all that they know will be wiped out in some tsunami of new things leaving them stranded on some desert island alone and and a shivering wreck leaves them cold.
Change however is the bubbling primordial soup of all great things in life. Change is what makes life interesting and more live-able.
So what is it about change that people hate so much. Well its not change perse, its change that is imposed upon us as opposed to that which we choose.
AH! Now that's my kind of change. Change where I decide what happens next. Change I decide to put on a clean pair of underpants and feel the cool breeze and positive freshness, yes that's my kind of change.
So here are 5 great reasons to embrace change.
It happens
It happens anyway, whether you lie it or not so get used to it. Change is a bit like gravity, you don't have to agree with gravity, you don't have to believe in gravity, your don't even have to know how it works, but every time you trip over you know it exists. Change happens anyway so embrace it.
You decide
Whether its happening or you make it happen you need to take control of it where and when you can. taking control empowers you. There is nothing worse than feeling like a victim. powerless and controlled by others or events outside your control. Even if you cant control the change itself you can often control it timing, its pace and even its direction. either way, once you decide you are in some control you will feel better about whats happening in your life.
Changes Stimulates
Yes if you take control you get excited about the change. If you are deciding on the direction you can look forward to whats happening. No longer stuck in old routines or ruts you can now get stimulated by the idea of something great that is going to happen. Life is never better than when we are excited about the future It fires up all that is the very best in us. It floods our bodies with powerful endorphins that are positively healthy for us. Living a life of constant change that we are empowered by is a sure fire way to good health happiness and longevity.
Its all out there
All great progress for you as a human being lies outside your comfort zone. Its only out here in the vastness of the unknown that you actually grow. This is the universe of new self knowledge, where you begin to learn that you are capable of so much more than you thought you were. Experiencing that on a regular basis instead of the mundane, dark brown soup of the everyday is what keeps you alive, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. So go get it.
The Cosmic Gymnasium
How would your body be and feel if you sat all day in an armchair? Well pretty soon you'd be having trouble actually getting out of it, you body stiff and uncomfortable. Change is the cosmic gym. Change makes and keeps you flexible, flexible in your thinking and your attitudes. It also keeps you interesting, you always have something new to talk about and offer to others, its keeps you young and it keeps you positive. Its proven that learning something new on a regular day is an important way to stave of senility and possibly Alzheimer's. Learning something new, a musical instrument or a new language stimulates the brain cells and keeps them well oiled. Positive empowering change has the same effects
The 4 Conditions of Being Happy
In his brilliant book The Secrets of Being Happy, Richard Bandler lists the 4 conditions of being happy.
He asserts that all four conditions must be in place for you to be able to be happier.
1. Accountability.
You need to be accountable to yourself for your own results in life. do you take self responsibility for what happens, the outcomes of everything you engage in, for the way you think, behave and react to. this does not mean blaming yourself but simply being accountable for what happens, that way you open yourself to help yourself get a different outcome or get help form another to help you change the outcome in the future.
2 Proactivity.
Are you proactive,? When you want something do you take action to go and get it? One of the facets of depressed people is they generally have difficulty in generating enthusiasm for doing anything, they become passive and inactive. Forward motion in life is a key part of being happier and that forward motion is in your hands nobody else’s.
3. Sensory Acuity.
This means becoming aware of your own feelings, thoughts and behaviours, the way you react to events and things around you that affect you. Are these ways that just continue to recreate the same response of unhappiness that you already have. by become aware of how you feel etc you can become the observer and also in a position to then decide to change your feelings, reactions and thoughts more in line with a person that would be happier in that situation. Becoming sensitive about how you feel, think and behave is the first step to change.
4 Adaptability.
Becoming adaptable is critical. if we cannot adapt or be prepared to adapt we will forever be trapped in the old ways of disappointment, regret and unhappiness. Learning how to access different ways of feeling, to reframe our thoughts so that we feel differently.
There are always at least two ways to see something so if your way of seeing it results in unhappiness, disappointment, regret, guilt or some other negative emotion or feeling then examine how another way of seeing it can result in a better outcome.
Remember , our reactions are just OUR reactions, others can and do react differently in the same circumstances. It’s the way we react that determines our outcome and our reactions are based on how we first feel about it.
Being happy is a choice but not one most of us actively engage in. We behave more like passengers on a bus with no control over which stops it will stop at. Events just seem to happen and we react in the ways we have learned to react based on past experience, even if that is no longer appropriate for the current situation.
Nothing is set in stone in human terms, everything is up for grabs, all change is possible if we first just accept that fact. finding that change is possible is the greatest leap forward in being happier.
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Sense of purpose
Many people have a job or even a lifelong career that they don't enjoy. They do this usually for economic reasons, we all need to earn the money to run our lives and keep our commitments for family etc.
Often we get caught in a rut early on in life, go down a particular educational route that leads to a career and we make this decision long before we really know what we want or like in life. Once started its hard to get off this track. We Amy have invested years in education and on job experience not to mention the cost of that education. So it hard to turn your back on a career when we are invested into it in this way. Friends and family may not understand, there is a lot of social pressure to contend with.
The thing is this though. We cannot really find true lasting happiness if the job we do does not satisfy us.
Having a sense of purpose is vitally important to that happiness. We may not necessarily need it from a job, we can find that sense of purpose outside in another activity whilst doing a job for the money and this is fine, but for many the job we do defines us and is a very important.
If you can find a career or activity that is truly in line with your values or desires it can totally transform your life. It may not be financially rewarding but as they say, "you cant take it with you" and on your deathbed what will you look back and value?
Of course finding another career that does suit us is not an easy thing to achieve but starting the process in itself be the start of a rewarding journey
Here are 7 questions that might help you define what is important in your life. Answer them quickly, not too much time to think just allow your sub conscious to deliver the answer quickly. So take up a pad and pen and get going now. When you have done, the answers further down may be revealing for you. Don't look at the answers until you have completed the questions
Best of luck and enjoy.
Defining your major purpose in Life
1.) What are the 5 most important things in your life?
2.) What are your most 3 important goals in life?
3.) If you only had 6 months to live, how would you spend those 6 months?
4.) If you suddenly came into 10 million, what would you do differently than you are dong today?
5.) What have you always wanted to do but were afraid to attempt?
6.) What sort of activities give you the greatest feeling of importance?
7.) If you knew you could not fail, what one great thing would you dare to dream?
I hope you have completed the questions
Explanation
1.) Self esteem is the key to peak performance, but it comes only when your goals and values fit hand in glove.
2.) These are likely to be the most important concerns or goals right now.
3.) This refers back to basic valuesHow much of your current life is consistent with what you would do if you only had 6 months to live. Important to remember that you never know when you have only 6 months left.
4.) If you had all the time and money in the world, you would actually have complete freedom to choose. The fact is you can actually accomplish these things if you set them as goals, make a plan and start working towards them.
5.) This may tell you what the self limiting block is that is holding you back from achieving your full potential.
6.) That which gives you self esteem unerringly leads to your area of excellence.
7.) Whatever you wrote, you can do , can have or can be. The only question is . How badly do you want it and are you willing to pay the price?
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The positive benefits of learning to live an authentic life are incalculable. Less stress and anxiety, feelings of self worth and generally being happier in yourself. Greater motivation and peace of mind.
Living authentically, that is living on a daily basis in tune with you true values, not compromising them to be acceptable, popular or not make "waves"
Most people wear a "mask" through life. It's the face that they put on for either the benefit of others or to shield themselves and hide heir true self. This mask is developed over a long time stating in early childhood, around 6 and them becoming more complex as time goes on. Under Sixes wear no mask, they are who they are but then comes the moment when consciousness arrives, specifically self consciousness and from then on we become aware of how others may judge us. We begin to adjust our behaviour to a way that we "think" others will accept more easily.
This is of course all a construct of our minds. We actually don't know what others are thinking. We imagine and assume this and in doing so create a persona that is not true to who we really are. In extreme cases people literally create a persona that is a complete fantasy, like a character form a play.
Deconstructing this personal takes time. We need to learn to trust ourselves, to understand that we are good enough just as we are. The older one gets the easier it is, older people don't care as much about what others think so it's easier to be authentic.
The process can start with simply saying what you believe rather than what is acceptable, preparing to stand alone occasionally and not worrying about the short term consequences.
Studies have shown that we appreciate people who are authentic, we trust them more and feel they are more reliable. Think of someone that you know that is who they are, don't we appreciate them? On the other hand think of somebody you know that swings with the wind so to say, tends to agree with whoever they are with, has inconsistent values that depend on the moment, place or people they mix with, how do you feel about them?
Learning to live authentically is possibly the single most important change you can make towards your open happiness.
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New years resolutions don’t work, you might have worked that out by now but surprisingly people still persist with the idea that just by saying that this is what i want this year it will somehow magical appear.
Of course the health and fitness industry just loves new year starts, they get more new sign ups at this time of the year than any other. I think the average person lasts about 3 weeks and then goes back to the couch for their exercise.
So why is this? Well you might have heard the old adage that it takes 28 days to make of break a habit and its possibly true. But why should it be true? Heres a possible answer.
In you brain all your thoughts are in fact electrical signals, that also includes all behaviour, all actions and reactions. Its the reactions that I want to concentrate on for a moment. You might believe that you are in control of your life but the reality is that 95% of everything you do is a reaction that has been programmed into your mind , by you, based on past experiences.
From our earliest moments , when we have very little in our brains we start to learn about the world and we watch and copy our parents and see what they do in all and every circumstance. As humans we have two very important drivers, fear and safety. We always go away from fear, or pain and towards safety and comfort. So at that early age as we experience all sorts of new experiences we learn automatically to move away from pain and fears towards comforts. Each time we do we tell our subconscious, the storehouse of all our reactions, what we need to do when we next encounter that situation.
Over time as we recreate these reactions the neural pathways of electrical current get strengthened until they are possibly hard connections. This is how habits are formed. do anything repetitively and eventually you can stop thinking consciously how to do it, you can do it unconsciously. Driving, touch typing, smoking, anything can become an automated response. This includes a way of talking, a way of dealing with people, a way of using your hands whenever you talk of think about a particular thing, it all becomes automated.
So its January 1st and you decide to change your life. I'll get fit, give up smoking, whatever. At first you are all motivated and it looks like things are going to be different this time. But heres the rub. All through those early days and weeks you are using your conscious mind to drive your behaviour and using your conscious mind is hard work because its needed to do lots of other things all the time. You have to remember to go to the gym or get up for a run. The thing is that back there in your brain is the old pattern, still as strong as ever. the minute you forget to get up you revert to the old pattern again, its in control.
If you are not consistent with your new behaviour for at least 4 weeks and probably 6 or more the old behaviour is still there, it takes this long for your new behaviour to build a strong connection and whilst it does and you continue, the old one will eventually atrophy or die away.
Think of it this way. Take an elastic band and wrap it around your thumb and next three fingers. open your fingers and hold the band stretched. commit to keep it this way for as long as you can. I will guarantee that long before your fingers get tired you will get distracted by something lease and you will let the fingers close. You conscious mind works in the same way. Once distracted , your old automated programming will take over.
What to do? In those crucial weeks you need to engage all and every method of reminding yourself of your new direction. post it notes everywhere, alarms on your phone, diary entries etc. you need to remind your conscious mind that this is what you are meant to be doing for long enough until your reprogramming has happened.
