Do you know that? You want to try something new or you have a specific goal or even have very specific plans to change something.
But it doesn't work. Or you manage to go to the gym once or twice or skip the piece of cake in the afternoon, but after five days at the latest the resolution or the change is gone again.
Guilty conscience
We feel bad at first. Maybe we then make another resolution and the same thing happens again. At some point we give up on it altogether, thinking: it's no use anyway.
And that's exactly where our trickster comes in. It is important to know that our brain tries above all to work in an energy-saving way. In other words, to network all the habits we have tried before, previous solutions to certain problems, stored rituals, etc. in the brain. So it now knows how to activate certain things or react to certain situations. For example, it has gotten used to always responding to external stress with counter-stress. Or checking your cell phone first thing in the morning, thinking about the difficult things that are coming up today as your first thought. In conflict situations, immediately withdrawing. This is the comfort zone, which is simply tapped into immediately to save energy.
Effort is not worth it
If we want to try something new, it is initially exhausting for the brain or for the comfort zone in question. Various tricks are activated in order not to have to leave this comfort zone; we remember: the brain wants to work in an energy-saving manner.
And the tricks are very sophisticated and often not even recognizable as tricks.
Typical excuses from the subconscious
“Maybe it's just not good for me”
“I lived quite well before”
“Maybe I'll try again next year”
“It just doesn't feel good”
“I just have so many other things to keep me busy at the moment”
Familiar?
The brain is a muscle and needs to be trained
But there is good news. If you really want something and learn to understand the tricks of your brain or your emotions, you can approach it differently. For example, with the sentence: "It may not be the right time right now, but I want to try this."
But here comes another challenge. Our brain needs an average of 63 experiences to create new connections. For example, having had the experience of reacting to an external request 63 times with a decisive "No, that's too much for me right now." From then on, it really starts to activate the new connections and it is easier to use them from that point on. This is how real behavioral changes ultimately occur.
Goodbye autopilot This is then real freedom, because we are not acting according to the previous automatism principle of our old, stored experiences, but allow ourselves to integrate what is really good for us in the long term and fills us with joy.
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