Do you find yourself doing the same things again and again, and feel like there’s nothing you can do about it? Are you just driven to repeat patterns that don’t make any sense? It’s a common human problem, and over the next few weeks I want to explore one model of why it happens and what we can do to change it.
I’ve recently finished re-reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. Centering Prayer is the meditative practice I follow myself. It comes out of the 1500-year-old Benedictine spiritual tradition, one of the little-known Western spiritual paths. It’s little-known because, until recently, you had to join a monastery to even hear about it.
Towards the end of the book, Cynthia Bourgeault has a wonderful diagram of how our misguided “emotional programs for happiness” end up making us miserable. For copyright reasons I won’t reproduce the actual diagram here, but I do want to spend the next few weeks working through the steps of the cycle she describes, and talking about it from my perspective as a hypnotherapist, as someone who is deeply interested in how thought and feeling and behaviour interact and how we can become free of our compulsions.
Because compulsions, or what she calls the “emotional programs for happiness“, are the start. Thomas Keating, the founder of Centering Prayer, talks about three “energy centres”: power/control, esteem/affection, and security/survival. Deep down within our minds, we are driven or drawn towards these three centres, and early in our lives we learn specific programs for trying to achieve them, which operate very powerfully at a subconscious level to pattern our behaviour.
The emotional programs for happiness emerge into consciousness as attachments and aversions – the things that we move towards and the things that we move away from, the things that make us feel comfortable or uncomfortable. Attachments and aversions are not rational. They are driven by the emotional programs for happiness, which in turn are shaped by childhood experience, so we are caught in the irrational, incomplete understanding of a child in what we prefer and avoid.
Preferring some things, avoiding others – this creates, in turn, hidden agendas which (because they are irrational) we tend not to admit to. We like to depict our behaviour as reasonable, principled, unselfish and even altruistic, and we get so good at doing so that we even believe it ourselves a lot of the time. We make after-the-fact justifications for our behaviour which fit with the values that we hold as adults, even while the emotional programs of our childhood are actually what is driving us.
Hidden agendas, in turn, lead inevitably to triggering events. Since everyone is running round with their own programs for happiness, and few of them mesh neatly with mine, I will always find things that other people do that trigger off my attachments and aversions, that “push my buttons”. Either their hidden agenda is the same as mine, and we’re in competition, or it’s opposite to mine, and we’re in direct conflict.
What this creates is the experience of frustration. I want to fulfil my emotional program for happiness. I want to move towards my attachments and away from my aversions. But someone or something is not letting me. I have powerful internal forces trying to move me in a certain direction, and I can’t go in that direction.
Now, the natural response, the usual response, to a situation of frustration is afflictive emotion. We usually associate frustration with anger, but sadness and fear are also common responses to frustration. There can also be guilt or shame, because my hidden agenda is being revealed by the situation of frustration: It’s harder to deny my desire to do something or avoid something when that desire is being frustrated. It draws attention, and one thing the emotional programs for happiness do not want is for attention to be paid to them. They know they won’t stand up well to close examination.
In the grip of afflictive emotion, I start in on the internal dialogue. “Woe is me, this always happens to me.” “People just ain’t no good.” “One day I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.” “I’m a bad person and there’s nothing I can do about it.” And in saying these things to ourselves, we strengthen and justify the afflictive emotion we are feeling and descend into emotional turmoil.
Whatever it is we tell ourselves in the grip of afflictive emotion is itself patterned by our emotional programs for happiness, because what we are really trying to do is escape from the situation into one in which we feel happy again, and the only way we know to do that is by following the emotional program. The abuser (the emotional program for happiness that got us into this mess in the first place) comes along sympathizing and pretending to be the rescuer. Its grip over us is strengthened, because we don’t know any other way – and so the cycle begins again.
Here’s a scenario, a very common one. (Substitute your own guilty pleasure if it’s different.) You’re on a diet. You’re living on lettuce and miso soup. You’re feeling virtuous, until you make a mistake at work and somebody scolds you mildly. You feel bad. Now, what will stop you from feeling bad and make you feel good? Some chocolate will do that.
You eat some chocolate. Immediately, you feel guilty for breaking your diet. Yes, you really are a bad person, incompetent and lacking in self-discipline. You feel worse. What will help you feel better? Well, how about eating the rest of that bar of chocolate?
Not feeling good yet? You obviously need a bigger bar…
So what (you are probably asking by this point) can we do to break out of this cycle? Is there anything? Certainly there is. Remember back at the frustration point, where I said that the natural and usual response is afflictive emotion? This is the point where the cycle can be broken. The Centering Prayer technique for doing so is called the Welcoming Prayer (don’t get too hung up on all the “prayer” terminology, by the way, if that’s something you’re not comfortable with – it’s not, in either case, something that would usually be recognised as prayer). I talk about the Welcoming Prayer a lot, and I have a brief introduction to the Welcoming Prayer on my Relaxation Response page, but when we get to that point in the series I’ll go into it in more depth than I have previously. In its full form, the Welcoming Prayer directly addresses the underlying issue of the three faulty emotional programs for happiness.
In brief, what the Welcoming Prayer does is defuse the afflictive emotions so that the descent into internal dialogue and emotional turmoil, and the reinforcement of the emotional programs, is avoided. Over time, doing so weakens the emotional programs and enables you to respond to situations as they arise with a more authentic self, one that is actually doing what it thinks it’s doing.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll spend some time on each of the steps of the emotional cycle, exploring in more depth how it occurs and what we can do to change it.
If you’ve been following through all the videos in this series, you’ll realise that I think a realistic assessment of your planned change is an important step. It helps prevent unnecessary failure. (Yes, I used the “F” word. I’d be ejected from the Relentless Positive Thinking Club, if I’d ever belonged to it.)
Let’s not mince words: Change is hard, and there’s always a cost. It’s better to look squarely at that cost up front and decide whether the prize is worth it, than leap in unprepared and experience disappointment. Of course, many changes are well worth the cost, and that’s important to know too – it helps you to push through the in-between time when you’ve started paying the cost but are yet to get the rewards.
This is the last video in the series, which comes from my free online personal change course. When you sign up, you get, as well as the videos, a personal change techniques ebook, a series of emails to take you through the videos and ebook and encourage you over the longer term, and a set of planning sheets to use in writing down your planned change.
It’s currently the season of Lent, leading up to Easter. In Christian tradition, this is a period of fasting and personal reflection. Regardless of your faith tradition or lack thereof, this is a good time (because any time is a good time) to consider whether there may be some things in your life that you could do without.
I don’t mean this in a “you could get along without them if you had to, even though they’re basically good” sense. There are probably – almost certainly – things in your life that make no positive contribution and that could be removed without loss. There are also likely to be things that make an overall negative contribution, that you’d be actively better off if you didn’t have.
I recently read a thought-provoking post by Jeff Sexton, a copywriting blogger, called Lenten Thoughts on Ash Wednesday. (Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and it was last week.) He mentions the popular “Getting Things Done” approach. His criticism of this approach is that it requires you to start out by getting to the point that you want to stay at, the point of being completely organized. That triggered off the idea for this post: What about spending some time “Getting Things Undone”?
Take some time right now to reflect. Get a piece of paper and draw a line vertically down the middle. Now, on the left, note down the first few things that come to mind that are in your life, taking time, energy, space, perhaps even money, but not really contributing anything. These could be physical clutter (things you don’t use but that are in your way or taking up storage space), mental or emotional clutter (things you worry about that you can’t do anything about), or “activity clutter”, things you keep doing because you said you would, or out of habit, even though there’s no real benefit coming out of doing them.
In the right column of the piece of paper, write down anything that is in your life that does more harm than good and that you’d like to be rid of.
This is your “To Undo” list.
Your mission, between now and Easter, is to start undoing those things and removing them from your life.
Now, I know (because I’m a hypnotherapist, and people come to me for help to undo their habits) that it can be difficult to undo things, especially things that have been there long-term. Start with a few easy ones and build up some momentum. If there are some that you know will be particularly challenging, get some help with them, just as you would with a challenging “To Do” item.
Some resources that might help you are on my Courses page.
I’ve recently come to realize that there are three key principles which underly all true success. Here they are:
1. Start doing what you want to succeed at.
2. Pay attention and learn from what works, what doesn’t work, and the experiences of others who’ve gone before you.
3. Keep doing it until you succeed.
The principles of failure, of course, are exactly the reverse of these. But there’s a kind of silent zeroth principle that weaves in between those three: Undo what is hindering you.
Part 6 of the free online course 7 Steps to Effective Personal Change looks at why you haven’t changed already – the barriers that, if you don’t address them, might keep you from changing this time too.
The full course includes planning sheets, an ebook filled with useful change techniques, and step-by-step emails to take you through it all and remind you to apply it. You can sign up here for free.
I’m happy to say that I recently completed the two hundred situps training program that I use as my worked example in the Seven Steps to a Change Plan videos. In the videos I talk about starting the program up again after not working at it for a while.
In total, it took me eight months, not six weeks, but I did complete it (perseverance is the ultimate secret of success). And yes, in my final “exhaustion test” I did do 200 situps. Not bad, considering I could only do 24 when I started.
Now I’m beginning my next challenge: 100 pushups. On my initial test I could do six, so there’s definite room for improvement there. I’m using the very funky iPhone app to track my progress this time, instead of the tracking website that a fan of the program created.
I think it’s always good to have a challenge. I’m not a marathon sort of person (I have a slightly dodgy hip), so something like this is both aspirational and achievable.
I’ll post again when I finish – hopefully it’ll be less than 8 months this time.
The last video I shared with you was about finding the resources for change that you already have in yourself. This video builds on that and asks, what resources do you have around you?
These videos come from my 7-part free online course on personal change. Signing up gets you step-by-step email instruction, an ebook of change techniques, and a set of planning sheets as well as the videos.
I’m not an engineer. I did once take a single postgraduate software engineering class (though most engineers would argue that that isn’t real engineering). But I’ve worked with a lot of engineers in my role as a computer support person for maintenance tracking software, and I respect and enjoy their approach to life’s challenges. It’s not an approach that’s suited for every circumstance, of course. In situations of human emotional intimacy, it may be entirely the wrong approach – or maybe not, if we look at the principles behind it.
So here are the three things I’ve learned from engineering.
1. Assume there is a solution to every problem.
Engineers are great problem-solvers. That’s their natural bent, their default mental attitude. They approach every problem with the unspoken conviction that this problem can be solved, by us, using the resources we have and the techniques we know about.
Sometimes, of course, the problem can’t be solved, or can be solved but not at a reasonable cost, or would require resources or techniques that we don’t have. But that’s not the engineer’s starting point. One tendency I dislike in myself is that I often start out assuming that something can’t be done. A good engineer starts out assuming that something can be done, and then sets out to find out how.
2. Don’t assume you know what the solution is until you understand the problem fully.
I allude to this principle in one of my Seven Steps to a Change Plan videos. We limit ourselves too much if we start out assuming the solution before we’ve fully explored the problem. This is something I catch myself doing with my clients sometimes. It’s why it’s important to have a variety of techniques available and be practiced in not only using them, but also deciding which one to use. But the key thing is: Understand what the real problem is before you set out to solve it, otherwise you’ll solve the wrong problem and the real problem will still be there.
There are plenty of examples of engineers solving the wrong problem, of course. But a really good engineer will explore the “problem space” first before the “solution space”.
3. It costs one-tenth as much to maintain something correctly as it does to fix it when it breaks.
The application of this one to personal relationships is obvious. The time and effort you spend on keeping your relationship healthy on a day-to-day basis is going to be much less than it would cost you to restore it if it broke. Whatever else has happened in my day, I try to make positive contact every day with my wife, even if it’s only a hug or a kiss goodnight. We spend time listening to each other and talking about our concerns, because if we just let things drift, one day one of us will be in for a nasty shock. We’ve both seen it happen to people we know.
Same thing with your own health, of course. You can spend some extra time, effort and maybe money on healthy eating and exercise now, or pay the costs of neglected health later – medical bills, arduous rehab, and restricted activities.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to sell prevention. Factory managers don’t value it, and nor do we as individuals. The future isn’t real to us. The present is real to us, and in the present, we could spend time and effort on routine maintenance, or we could use it for something urgent. And why is it urgent? Could it be because you’ve neglected routine maintenance?
Don’t forget, when you sign up for the course you also get an ebook full of techniques to help you with your change process, a series of emails to take you through the videos and the ebook step-by-step, and a set of planning sheets to use.
Hi. This is the start of a new series with the theme “Three Things I’ve Learned”. I’m going to take everyday aspects of my life and look for three life lessons that can apply to anyone who wants to develop as a person. It’s a good practice for me, as well as being, I hope, helpful to you. I’ll be running it in parallel with my video series on Seven Steps to a Change Plan.
I enjoy having plants around, particularly flowering plants. I’m a fairly erratic gardener, but plants often seem to do well for me in spite of that. So a few years ago, I bought a flowering orchid at an orchid show where they were selling off surplus plants. It didn’t flower again for several more years, but towards the end of last year I noticed that it had a spike on it. I started encouraging it with orchid food – though I’m not sure how much difference that really made. It was going to flower regardless.
About mid-October, it was out, and I brought it inside where we could enjoy it. If I’d cut it, it might have lasted a week if I was lucky, but I left it on the plant, watered it occasionally, and just last week the last flower started to die. It had bloomed for more than three months. (I once had a cyclamen that flowered continuously for over a year.)
1. Plants will bloom when they’re ready to bloom. So will you and I.
Something that I see over and over with clients who come to me for help to change is that their issue has been going on for years, and they’ve been unhappy about it for at least months before they were ready to take the action of coming to see me. I’ve been asked by concerned parents if I can “make” their son or daughter stop smoking, and the answer, sadly, is no. They’ll look for ways to stop when they’re ready to stop, and not before. I wish I knew how to create readiness to change, in myself or other people, but I don’t – any more than I can make an orchid bloom before its time. (I know professional orchid growers can force blooming, but you get the idea.)
2. If you want it to last, leave it attached to what nurtures it.
I know that the positive changes I’ve seen in myself over the past few years are not just random – they’re a consequence of having practices in my life which nurture what’s blooming. They have roots. If I tried to separate them from the roots, they’d die very quickly.
3. Even so, eventually it may come time for the blooming to stop, for now.
This isn’t inevitable, of course. Personal change is not actually the same as flowers blooming; it can last the rest of your life. But if we think of a bloom as a practice or something of that nature, there are plenty of things that have come into my life, had their time of blooming, and gone again – but they could be back. I used to paint, for example, but haven’t done that for a while. Eventually I will take it up again, in its time. Enjoy your blooms while they last, without concerning yourself too much about how long that’s going to be.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the Three Things I Learned from Gardening. Next time: Three Things I Learned from Engineering!
This is the continuation of the series in which I post the videos which are part (but only part) of my free online course on planning personal change. When you sign up for the course, you also get planning sheets, emails which take you through the process step-by-step, and a free ebook which contains some excellent techniques to make your change process easier.
This video is about motivation. Not a “push” motivation where you make yourself do things, but a “pull” motivation – having something so attractive to aim for that you want to go through the process in order to get to that prize.
photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}
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