How to Change Your Behaviours

If you want to change things in your life then you must first change your behaviours. The problem for most people is that they believe changing their behaviour will take years and they want change now. But can change happen in an instant? The simple answer is Yes, it can! Yet because of society’s views on change and our own personal fear change inevitably takes some time for some people. You see, if we change too quickly, by society’s standards, then it means we never really had a problem to begin with.
If you want to change your behaviours the most effective way to do it is to associate extreme and present sensations (or feelings) of displeasure, disgust or hardship to the way you use to behave and enormous and present sensation (or feelings) of joy and achievement to the new behaviour.
There are no simple approaches to behaviour change but no matter which approach you use it all boils down to seven steps and you must go through them all in order to have change you desire. These steps aid us in finding an efficient and empowering way to make the change effective and lasting. Here are the seven steps,
Step 1: Decide What it is You Truly Want.
Many people have a hard time answering this question honestly if at all. Most have no idea what it is they truly want yet they know exactly what it is they don’t want. It is important to always keep in mind that whatever we focus on in life is what we get. So by focusing on the things you dislike or no longer desire to experience you get much more of it, it’s that simple. It is therefore imperative that you decide on what it is you truly want as it will give you something to focus on and move toward.
Be as specific as you possibly can be about what you want. This will give you clarity and the more clarity you have the more energy and power you have to pursue and achieve what you want much quicker. So it’s not enough to say you want a car, no no no you must be more specific and say ‘I want a 2007 BMW 321i sedan, black” that is being more specific.
Step 2: What’s Stopping You from Having it Right Now.
This is so important because if you don’t know what’s standing in your way then you will be running blind towards your goal. You will know what it is you need to overcome or avoid all together. Most of the time whats stopping us from changing is that we tend to think that the change we seek is going to cause us great distress than staying where we are right now. Change can bring about unknowns and that’s a part of what we fear. So think about this very carefully and be honest with yourself.
Step 3: Get Strong enough Reasons Why.
You must find a lot or reasons why you must change now. These reasons will be your motivation and must in part be linked to whatever you think may be stopping you from having what you desire right now. Change is rarely a question of capability, but of motivation. How motivated you are usually determines the actions you are willing to take and how persistent you will be. So it’s not a question of can you do it but rather will you do it or not and this in term boils down to your level of motivation. If you are highly motivated nothing will stop you but if your motivation is low any and every thing will stop or delay your progress. It you put together strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we have failed to change for years.
You must recognize that for most of us change is predominantly a ‘should’ and not a ‘must’. It may also be a ‘must’, but it’s a ‘must’ for some time in the future (usually the distant future). To create the change we desire now we must create a sense of urgency, as if our lives depend on it, such that we are moved to follow through.
Most of us fear change, we concern ourselves with thoughts like “What if I quit my job and start a business and it fails, I would have lost the sure income I have from my job” it’s common for most people to feel a sense of mixed emotions about change there is the despair and pleasure associated with it and this makes us uncertain as to what to do. The outcome is that we tend not to fully utilise the resources we have available within ourselves to make the changes we desire occur almost as instantaneously as when we are completely committed to changing.
To create the sense of urgency necessary to evoke a change you must associate enormously intense despair to not changing such that you know you must change right now. It is in that moment when you say “that’s it, I’ve had enough” “I will not go on like this another day!”
The strongest reasons you create for yourself that will motivate you is that which comes from inside you. When you are aware of not living up to your own expectations and standards for your life it can be a great motivator. We all want to live and act in accordance with our own vision of ourselves on a consistent basis.
To find other strong and emotional reasons ask questions of yourself. Questions like “what will it cost me if I don’t chang this now?” ‘what is it already costing me emotional, physically, spiritually and financially?”. You should also think of the way it affects your loved ones, and other people you care about, make the distress of not changing feel so intense and real that you will want to take action and change now.
You should also find and answer questions associated with the pleasure you will feel if you change. This will help you to mentally link those positive sensations to the idea of changing. So ask yourself questions like “How much better am I going to feel about myself if I change this today?” “What other things could I accomplish if I made this change right now?”. The important thing here is to get as many reasons as you can and make many of them strong reasons why change is necessary now and not some day in the future. So if you are not moved to make changes right now it’s because you don’t have strong enough reasons.
Step 4: Break out of Your Unhealthy Behaviours.
To get the change we want to see and experience in our lives it’s not enough to know what we want and find strong enough reasons why. You can be extremely motivated to change but if you keep behaving in the same ways doing the same unhealthy things then your life will not change and all you will have is more frustration and despair. Too many people want something different yet we continue to behave in the same manner. Insanity it is said is doing the same thing in the same way expecting a different result.
Consider also the person who wants to create a change because of the distress they are now feeling but they get some benefit from that which they are trying to change. What usually happens to most people is that they subconsciously believe that by maintaining the old behaviour they will something they will not get any other way. At this point they have mixed emotions about changing. It’s like someone who wants to loose weight but they still indulge in eating lots of chocolate because it gives them great comfort. Unconsciously they want the pleasure they get from eating chocolate.
You can do all the right things but if you derive a secondary benefit and it’s too strong, you will most likely go back to your old behaviour. What you must do is to break out of these unhealthy behaviours by getting enough reasons to change and also find a new way to get your needs met. You should also increase the strength and intensity of the reasons why you must change.
Another way you can break out of those unhealthy behaviour is to just stop the behaviour right now, ‘cold turkey’. You simply stop never to return to that behaviour again.
A key element to breaking out of an unhealthy behaviour pattern is time. You can change your behaviour far better if you break the pattern in the moment the behaviour is occurring any later and your efforts will be strained or ineffective.
Step 5: Find or create a new Empowering alternative.
This step is so important step. to gain long-term and long lasting change you must find an alternative way of getting out of despair and into feeling sheer pleasure. This is the reason why most people fail when then try to change and why their attempts are only temporary. So you may have followed the previous steps and also broken those unhealthy behaviours but what will you replace it with? You need to fill the gap with a set of options that will give you the same pleasurable feeling without the negative side effects. So when you decide to stop drinking soda you must come up with a new way or ways to replace the benefits you gained from drinking soda. This could be as simple as taking up body building or concentrating on fitness.
Step 6: Make Your new empowering Alternative consistent.
To make sure that the change you’ve created is consistent and long-lasting first you must rehearse it (the new behaviour) over and over again until it is a set behaviour. All of this must be done with high emotional intensity or else all the repetition in the world will not help you to change.
Next you need to set up a schedule of reinforcement for your new behaviour. You do this by rewarding yourself each time you succeed in engaging the new behaviour. So you don’t wait until you have lost fifty pounds but the moment you can show up in your gym and actually begin exercising you can give yourself pat on the back. You can set up a series of short and long-term goals and as you achieve each of then you immediately reward yourself. If you don’t do this you will begin sooner or later to see every accomplishment as just a drop in the tall bucket of your goal and use it as a reason to go back to your old behaviour. Whenever you continually reinforce a behaviour or emotion it will become an automatic and conditioned response. Anything you fail to reinforce will eventually dissipate.
Step 7: Put the new behaviour to the Test.
In order to be sure that your new behaviour will work in the future you will need to test it. One of the ways to do this you is to imagine for the example, the situation that used to distress you and see if it still distresses you or has the new way of feeling replaced it.
You will also want to test the consequences of your change. What effect will the changes you have made have on those around you. How positive an effect will the changes have on your personal life and you work or business life. You must be sure that the new behaviour is appropriate based on your current beliefs, values and lifestyle.
These seven steps can be used to change almost anything, the key is to use it.