The only constant in life is change, right?  So why do we so often resist it?

Because we crave the familiar and the predictable.  We like to know how something will turn out before we embark on a novel experience.  We need to feel safe.  What happens if we fail?  What happens if we succeed?

How we think about our present and our future is dictated by how our past has programmed us, both the patterns we have inherited from our ancestors (nature) but how we have ‘learnt’ to behave and survive (nurture).

So often we settle into doing the same things day in day out, in the same routines, and continuously responding in the same way.

The film, ‘Groundhog Day’, demonstrates how we slip into autopilot in our lives, completing the same tasks, interacting with the same people, making the same decisions and getting the same results.  In the film, Bill Murray’s character Phil is given 34 chances to relive his day and break free from the routines he has created in his life.

We operate approximately 93% in our unconscious mind.  When we stay stuck in unconscious patterns of familiar thinking, feeling and behaving we are effectively just expressing ways of being which we’ve inherited or learnt (to survive) without every really exploring what we might be capable of or what we might actually WANT in our life.

So how can we consciously choose to focus our attention on creating something new in the areas of our life where the unconscious patterns are not serving us, or are stopping us tapping into our potential?

An area of my life where I would routinely slip into an unhelpful pattern was in group situation where I would become the listener, letting others take centre stage without really feeling I had been significant in that interaction; feeling a bit invisible.  See my previous blog.

One way I help clients create a picture of how things could be different for them in an area of their life where they are feeling stuck or unfulfilled, is to get them to visualise what they would be thinking and feeling and what they would see themselves doing differently if they could change that situation.

The unconscious mind can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, so  mentally rehearsing each step towards a new conscious reality, as if it were a lived experience, can help our brain believe it’s already a familiar pattern of behaviour.

By visualising scenarios that are likely to play out, we can use all our senses to mentally rehearse what we will see ourselves doing in those situation; what we will be seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, tasting and touching that will create the desired outcome, inviting all emotions associated with each step.   When we can imagine the sights, sounds and smells associated with that scenario, with practice the emotions we feel in relation to that thought will be diminished so that when we actually practice it, the brain believes it is already a well-trodden path, a familiar pattern of behaviour and not something to be resisted.

A talk I recently attended given by Charlie Unwin, an Olympic Performance Psychologist, reinforced to me that mental rehearsal on it’s own isn’t going to create a new conscious reality.  We need to actually practice doing what we’ve visualised ourselves doing.

When we’ve consciously practised doing something differently and it’s gone well, it’s useful to re-run that experience in your head while the neural pathways are primed.  Remembering what you heard yourself saying, saw yourself doing and what you were thinking and feeling will strengthen the new neural pathway/pattern.  This is called the Reinforcement Effect.  In this way we are using ‘doing’ as a way of practising visualising (the reinforcement effect) and visualising as a way of practising ‘doing’.

Using this technique myself in group situations where I had felt insignificant, I repeatedly imagined what I would be thinking and feeling, what I could be saying and how I would say it and what I would be doing with my body in order to feel significant in a group.  Having repeatedly imagined it, it became much easier to actually do it and start to change an unhelpful pattern of behaviour.  This is, of course, still work in progress.

Where is Groundhog Day popping up in your life?  What opportunities have you got to practice doing something different?  What would you see yourself doing differently if that scenario was more fulfilling or successful?