Why we blow our Plans
We might have several really good things happen to us in a day but if just one really bad thing happens, that’s the thing that is going to get all of our attention, energy and emotion. When difficult things occur the signals of stress and survival kick in and our bodies respond accordingly. This cycle repeats itself as you’re running late and sitting traffic or your spouse says something snarky to you. You’re body starts processing a response and making signals of stress and you cope. If you’re like me, then you do so by eating.
This doesn’t just apply to overeating. It really applies to ANY habit we are trying to break. If you really think about it, you’ll see where it applies to relationships and work environments too. Your brain and your body are going to fight you to stay with the familiar vs. the unknown. After all you have a history of thriving in the familiar (you’re still alive right?) but what you don’t know how to do is exist yet in the unknown.
Emotions are what keep us IN MOTION. It is your emotions that propel you to get up and do something, to take an action. Understanding that if most of your day is sucked up by negative emotions then most of your actions are going to be somewhat self destructive. And it’s going to be a real struggle to redirect that energy into something that’s new such as a lifestyle change that you want to make.
Where traditional diet plans tend to fail us is that they focus on building the positive without first addressing the negative. So as soon as you get stressed or your schedule changes you can no longer support these new healthy habits you have acquired. It’s just too hard and your body says “please bring me back to the old and familiar.”
So what do you do?
You have to become greater than the person who created your old habits. You have to build your better self from the inside out.
You can hand over your money to a coach to make a meal plan for you and but there is no way in hell that meal plan is going to address your specific and unique problems for the long term. Only you can can change you.
The first step to doing that is to change your response to the stimulus that created your current habits. Here is one example:
Husband says to his wife “You have been gone for 45 minutes, what took you so long?”
Wife instantly feels attacked and frustrated and begins to explain “I had to pick up the stuff for our child’s school project and run by the bank and I though I told you all of that earlier.”
The husband in this scenario doesn’t want the wife’s excuses, rather he wants her attention.
British Philosopher Allain De Botton describes the mechanisms behind this interaction perfectly in his lecture “Why you will marry the wrong person.”
“Psychologists talk of two patterns of response that tend to crop up in people whenever there is a danger of needing to be extremely vulnerable, dangerously vulnerable, and exposed to another person.
The first response is to get what psychologists call anxiously attached. Attachment theory, some of you may know. So when you are anxiously attached to somebody, rather than saying, “I need you, I depend on you,” you start to get very procedural. You say, “You are ten minutes late,” or, “The bin bags need to be taken out.” Or you start to get strict when actually what you want to do is to ask a very poignant question: Do you still care about me? But we don’t dare to ask that question, so instead we get nasty. We get stiff. We get procedural.”
How many times in a day do feelings like this happen to us? For most of us, too often.
As Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about in his books, our instincts are to wake up every day and create the same reality that we are used to.
This ultimately means us responding to our environment in the same exact ways day after day and when you think about it, that probably isn’t what you ever actually wanted.
So how do you overcome ALL of this which must be so overwhelming?
You make a choice to overcome it. You ALLOW help to come into your life to practically and methodically work to implement a new way of looking at things.
Are your needs being met?