Changing Your Bad Behavior
Last weekend I was given the opportunity to learn how to wake surf behind a boat.
My experience with water sports has been fairly limited over the course of my life because my family never had a boat to sport behind.
So I've been water skiing a handful of times in my life, and I was okay at it.
But this wake surfing thing - it requires some different strategies than water skiing.
Your weight distribution is different and you have to lean forward instead of leaning back.
And even though I haven't water skied in almost 30 years, it was fascinating to me that my body and brain still had a pattern for how to show up for a water sport, and I kept wanting to lean back.
My limited water skiing from three decades ago still had a pretty strong hold in my brain and body.
As I was learning to wake surf, I would realize I needed to change my weight distribution and posture, and within seconds I would realize I needed to change them again.
My body and brain would go right back to the past patterns almost faster than I could change them.
When I was up on the surfboard, it was a constant discussion in my head about adjusting my stance.
Here's the crazy life coach in me coming out - even while making constant adjustments on the surfboard, I was thinking about how this is so much like trying to create change in every area of our lives.
Our primitive brain already has a pretty strong pattern of behavior in place for something, and when we try to change it, our brain and body just naturally revert back to the original pattern.
Creating new patterns can require an almost constant awareness of the old pattern creeping in and the new pattern feeling elusive.
And nothing has gone wrong here, it's just our brain doing what it has been created to do., which is to create patterns as often and as strongly as possible to conserve energy.
So, if you're trying to change something, remember that your brain is so comfortable with the past pattern that it will revert back to it as quickly as possible.
And it just requires consistently showing up with the new pattern in order to eventually replace the old pattern.
And even then, that old pattern will randomly still show up.
It's just how it is.
Nothing to get upset or angry about.
We just have to remind our brain that now we're doing something different and change to the new pattern.
Sometimes, creating awareness of this new pattern can be the most difficult part.
That's where having a life coach can come in really handy.
I can help you see the patterns that are holding you back and then help you create a compassionate space for implementing the new pattern you decide on.
Want to learn more about this?
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