Change of Thought Process Leads to More Sustainable Results
What we experience in life can be viewed from many different viewpoints. Some of those viewpoints can be catabolic (destructive or negative), in their makeup. When you feel that you are a victim, lethargic, angry or stressed about a situation, you are experiencing catabolic energy. When your view of a particular situation comes from an anabolic (building or positive) frame of mind, you have feelings such as being responsible for your reactions, having concern for others, or looking to reconcile all parties to an outcome that is beneficial to all.
It is always possible to change your state from one viewpoint to another if you are committed to doing so. Basically all change that one initiates of their own accord is motivated by the following words: What's In It for Me? (WIIFM). No one is ever truly committed to making a change in their life or trying something differently until they're able to answer that question for themselves.
When one chooses to go about a change in their life one or more of the following items change. The individual either focuses on changing their behavior, they focus on changing their emotions or they focus on changing their thoughts. While all three approaches can work for you, there are varying levels of effectiveness to them.
Focus on changing your behavior is actually your least effective way of making sustainable change. There are a couple of good examples of this. If you are trying to get your children to make a change in their behavior, you may find it works for awhile. Then, often as time passes by, they slip back into the behavior you were trying to get them to change. Since the change you have asked them to make was not of their own choice, their commitment to making it is not 100% there. One may find, even when they themselves say they will change their actions on how they will do something, that they're slipping back into old habits. While they may be sincere in their intentions, the new behavior has not been committed to because one may not have weighed the consequences of not changing or the benefits of changing. There is not a total work through of the "What's In It for me?" question. On a positive note by trying a new behavior and beginning to see some results, it may inspire them to modify their emotions or thoughts toward the situation they are trying to change.
Focus on emotions begins to help increase one's buy-in to making a change. One may find a growing feeling of excitement or enthusiasm for what they are doing. At other times the change helps more to relax the individual, such as when the change involves doing something physical such as meditating, walking or jogging. Others are able to gain buy-in for the change they are looking to make in their life by keeping an emotions journal and monitoring their moods as they make the change. By recording in their journal they are able to better explain mood swings and what may have triggered them.
While emotions can have a profound impact on making a change more sustainable for a person, the most effective way to keep change permanent in one's life is to focus on the thought pattern that is keeping the change from happening. Focus on thoughts gets to the root cause of why your actions have been as they are or why your emotions are reacting the way they are. Thought process analysis and focus helps to provide one an entirely different perspective of the situation at hand. When fully immersed in changing ones thoughts toward the process they are looking to change, there is a shift in awareness, energy and the feeling of power in dealing with the situation. While changing one's thoughts is usually the most challenging of the three types of changes to implement, it ultimately has the most long lasting impact. It is often why when a person is committed to making permanent change in their life the help of a coach or partner to listen to them intuitively and hold them accountable for the actions they will take to make the change they are seeking is most effective.
Behavior, emotions and thoughts are all methods that can be used to begin to implement the change in your life that you seek. However, while all three work to some extent, change in thought is by far the most effective for lasting change to take place.
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