The Secret of Sustainable Change to Mindset, Behavior Patterns and Habits
The key to sustainable change is to keep working with the new thought or behavior pattern for 90 days to create sustainable change by developing new pathways for the nervous system to carry the new message down the neuron track. The brain has an amazing capacity to change and adapt. The brain and nervous system can change the neural pathways and synapses in response to changes in behavior, environment, thinking, emotions and changes related to bodily injury. There are some simple principles to create change that will also show why New Year’s Resolutions are often not successful. But with the right approach and plan, they could be successful.
We have well defined neural pathways that determine how we do things over time. We have learned things or developed beliefs and mindset that are integrated into our nervous system. But, if there is something you want to change about yourself; a behavior, a habit or a mindset, you can create sustainable change when you understand how to re-wire your brain and the pathways that communicate how we do things or how we think about things.
If you were to go for a hike in the forest, and you reach a fork in the trail, you can make a decision. You can continue on the well-traveled trail that you always follow. This trail is well worn and easy to follow along without effort. If you choose to follow a new trail, you will have to branch off the main trail and start forging a new path to follow; it will be challenging at first. The more times you follow along on this new path, it will become stronger and more defined until it becomes the routine or default path to follow. The old original path will grow over and fade away as it is used less and less often, unless of course you keep going back to it.
So how does this work in your brain? When you want to create a new path to follow, you create a plan with some simple realistic steps. You practice these steps for a couple of weeks and once you have them down you add more actions to your plan and practice the new plan until you have integrated the additional steps into your plan. You may run into challenges and barriers along the way so you keep finding ways to modify you plan to find success towards the change your are working on. You keep building onto the plan with this realistic approach until you are able to sustain the new pattern as your new way that is preferable to the old way. After 90 days you will have an integrated new way of thinking or behaving. This is key to creating new lifestyle patterns.
Other tips to support new pathways include engaging your senses, emotions and pleasure into your new actions. The more you can target different areas of the brain with the new message, the stronger the matrix of communication will be to create a web of communication for the new patterns.
The less energy you send to the old pathway, either by not following the old pattern or not thinking or speaking about it, the quicker you can shift to the new pattern and let the old one go. I help my clients to create mindset mantras to turnaround those negative thoughts that keep them stuck in the old pathways. My Tip and Resources section has instructions how to create a mindset mantra.
I have specific techniques that I use in my practice to help my clients re-wire new pathways to support the new actions to turn a stressful lifestyle into a successful lifestyle so they can have more harmonious relationships, better health and feel more passion for what they are doing. For a tip sheet on setting SMART goals go to my Tips and Resources Section.
Sara is a Stress Management Specialist and creator of the “Turn Your Stress into Success Programs”. With more than 30 years in Healthcare and Certified as an Integrative Health Coach, she can help you to turn a stressful lifestyle into a successful lifestyle. For more information and techniques contact Sara Regester at Sara@directions4wellness.com or her website at Direction4Wellness.com. Her programs are designed to support you to create Stress resilience to turn your stress into success.
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