Tag: patterns

Are you You? Or are You who you were programmed to be?

  • How actually did You become the You, you are today?

When did that process, that programming,  start?

What specifically was the process involved?

We learn scripts, patterns and beliefs as we grow from a baby, we ‘load’ the program.

Is the ‘program’ You are running (subconsciously) today, serving you well in all facets of your life?

This video from Dr Bruce Lipton gives some insight. It is 13 minutes long and well worth the watch.

  • Having watched the video – any ‘program changes’ You can make, new beliefs You can adopt?

We can change Beliefs, as Bruce says, in two main ways:

  • By invoking the ‘Hypnotic’ state of our mind that we have in the first seven years of our life.
  • By Repetition – its how we learned to drive for example, or perhaps learned to play an instrument if we start a little later in life than seven years old. We REPEAT and REPEAT  and REPEAT. The brain learns by repetition.

What will you change?

What will Be-real in your life?
What you Be-lieve

There is Reality & there is our Representation of it. They are not the same.

Not one Human Being (Scientists included), or for that matter, creature on the planet, ‘knows’ reality i.e. What Is.

Controversial? 😱

What we know, is the representation we have built of it in our mind / body.

We do not react or respond to reality, we react or respond to the representation we have built of it and yes we do have instinctual responses ‘programmed’ within us. (Instinctual behaviour is the inherited ability of an organism to respond to a specific stimulus.)

We do not however live our lives mainly driven by natural instincts.

We LEARN what reality is, we are taught by our own experience, by our parents, by others, by the culture we are raised in, by the language(s) we learn, the beliefs and values we learn, using them to ‘label’ and ‘understand’ reality .

A lot of the learning about reality takes place when we are babies / toddlers / children.

We learn labels, scripts, patterns of thinking, habits,  beliefs, values etc that ‘equip’ us (in a range of useful to not useful) to ‘deal’ with reality.

We then live our lives in a ‘Thought Bubble’ that we create ABOUT reality using those labels, scripts, patterns etc.  Note:- we may learn to ‘hijack / take over’ some instinctive patterns within the ‘Thought Bubble’ and then modify them, for example the FEAR response.  The majority of us are not aware of living in the ‘Thought Bubble,’ and normally never question our thoughts ABOUT reality.

Belief:- an internally held representation of a lens through which we perceive reality. (We have thousands that vary by context) and we learn them all.

We build our representation of reality (Thought Bubble) by way of those learned beliefs (lenses).

Some of those beliefs operate at a level below conscious awareness and are know as cognitive biases e.g. confirmation bias.

There are many, many cognitive biases, just google. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-cognitive-biases-in-the-modern-world/

It is NOT seeing is believing, it is BELIEVING is seeing.

You may have heard the quotation “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” ~Aristotle.

An issue arises:-

> A prime driver for every creature is to survive and thrive.

> A subset of that driver is to keep ourselves SAFE.

> Lack of safety triggers FEAR.

> As a child, our young immature brain learns patterns to minimize the stress caused by fear (feeling unsafe)

The brain learns by repetition, by repeating those thoughts about how to avoid fear. Some beliefs we may form are:-

I’m not good enough – I must please everyone – I need to be perfect etc. then I’ll be safe

These are known as injunctions and drivers

 

> We also learn patterns and scripts as the stimulus (lack of safety), triggers FEAR.

What may happen then is, that FEAR dominates how we live our lives and drives / motivates our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. In this state of course, we are not normally aware that we LEARNED these patterns and scripts, we are just aware that well, this is my life, this is how I am, look at what’s happening to me etc. In fact we develop a VICTIM mentality where of course there is also a ‘Persecutor’ and a ‘Rescuer’ we live our lives as the VICTIM in the Drama Triangle.  Actually, we all play each of the roles  and you may recognise them playing out in your life.

 

Until what?

There is a question I like:-

Is your Mind your Master or are you the Master of your Mind?

When our Mind is our Master we kind of run in ‘automatic mode’ perceiving reality through those learned beliefs / lenses  (within our thought bubble) and mainly reacting to Reality (What Is), following the old scripts and patterns that we learned. You may notice in a Team meeting for example, childhood patterns emerging and playing out, its like being back in the school playground.🤷🤪🤬🤯😒😖😜🤷‍♂️

As I said, some patterns of thoughts and strategies may serve us well. Others perhaps, not so much.

As we learn to become Master of our Mind, its like we operate at a different level of consciousness and are much more likely to think about our thinking / how we are representing ‘things?’ Pausing and choosing how to respond, rather than reacting to the representation of Reality we have built . We recognise also  perhaps a few of those beliefs e.g. “I’m not good enough” that we have learned do not perhaps serve us well and because we are Masters of our Mind, we can choose to  change those beliefs.

  • How are you representing the reality of issues,  problems in your life?
  • What belief might you CHOOSE to Change?
  • How might you reframe the representations of reality you have built?

How does the Brain represent Reality part 1?

Figure 1 vakog

What are representational systems? See also part 2

Put another way, how does the brain re-present reality? (This entry is from the teachings of NLP).
The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Your preferred system affects how you understand the ‘world’ out there
• We don’t all have the same preference and therefore do not all have the same ways of describing or talking about reality.
• Once you know your preference, you can exploit its strengths and begin to become more flexible by exploring other representational systems
What is this about?
A useful way to think about representational systems is; we experience the world through our five (or maybe there are six 🙂 ) senses, i.e. we see (visual), hear (auditory), feel (kinesthetic) smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory) and maybe we could include having a sixth sense (intuit). I will refer to the five using the acronym  (vakog). Let me take gustatory as an example. When you have a meal you obviously taste the food and this strongly involves your sense of smell, (olfactory). The other senses are also involved of course, we see the food (visual), we feel the textures (kinesthetic) and we hear (auditory) and this is maybe more subtle, the sounds of cutlery, conversation, maybe background noise in a restaurant. Etc. Thus there is a whole experience laid down as a set of patterns in our brains, driven by each of the five senses. This is an important notion here, that as we experience life ‘out there’, we lay down patterns internally, to represent the experience, using our five senses to drive that, see Figure 1 vakog

I trained in NLP back in 1996, with John Seymour, here he is explaining about Visual Auditory and Kinesthetic

If we now, let’s say, sometime after the meal, want to remember the experience then it is as if we relive the experience internally, triggering each of the senses. As an example let me ask you to think about cutting a lemon in half, removing the pips, then biting into the flesh, you can feel your mouth salivating now, at the expected sourness to come.

What am I saying here?
• We experience the world through our senses
• That experience is laid down as patterns in our brains
. We represent what is out there, internally in our minds
• We can ‘relive’ the experience by recalling the pattern / representation
It may or may not surprise you to know that when we lay down and recall memories we have a preferred system for doing that. The visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the primary systems used in most western cultures. Olfactory and gustatory are minor and usually lumped with kinesthetic. Another fact that may help you, is to know that our learning styles are closely aligned with visual, auditory and kinesthetic.

Think about the way you learn best.

  • By seeing pictures?
  • By listening?
  • By direct experience?

Feel the Fear – Do it anyway.

 

What is the purpose of fear?

What outcome is that e-motion focused on?

Primarily Safety – to keep us safe, is one of the main reasons we become afraid, see fight, flight, freeze.

Let’s look at the SCARF model again

As David says, fundamental drivers of the brain are perceived threat and reward. In his SCARF paper he talks of an underlying principle that the brain operates on, Minimise Threat – Maximise Reward (Avoid  – Approach) with a huge bias toward Minimise Threat (keep us safe).

Collaborating & Influencing using SCARF

So how does fear stop us?  We hold beliefs about ourselves, often learned early in life, about what we can or can’t do, oh and we are right about those beliefs being ‘true’  🙂

Looking at the picture above, familiar  thinking / behaviour has the potential to trigger reward (dopamine) and it does. There is Certainty (one of the SCARF domains) about the familiar – we know what is going to happen. As the slide says even if the familiar thing is ‘bad’ for us we get a reward from the brain, see addiction. 

New thinking / behaviour on the other hand triggers a perceived threat state, we are uncertain, not sure about what may happen, if we think in this new way, believe this new thing, act in this new way, we then trigger an amygdala flood.

How old do you think we are when we first perceive threat and reward?

As a child, we build patterns based on what our brain ‘learns’in terms of avoiding threat. The brain then uses these learned ways of thinking and behaving and they become familiar, laid down as patterns (which take no conscious effort to evoke when required).  When we follow these familiar ways, we don’t get nasty threat feelings.  Of course  we are right when we justify those ways 🙂

What is happening?

One of the things that happens, is that we learn we do not like the effect of the threat response and the feelings it evokes within us.  We then become afraid of feeling that feeling. 🙂 The brain being the brain, learns “ah ok if we don’t go to that threat state then we won’t get that horrible feeling” and we’ll feel ‘safe’! Oh and being the brain I know  I am right about that 🙂

So that’s what we’ll do, we’ll just not go there and that’s a habit formed 🙂

What to do?

We need to go there 🙂 feel the fear and do it anyway. We think it / do it and nobody dies 🙂 We ride through the feelings of sick in the stomach (because blood moves to our muscles to get ready to fight or flight) of the rising heart rate, shallow breathing, dry mouth etc. We ride it out and in so doing our brain learns that actually,  we can do it or think it 🙂 🙂

It may be useful to use the name it, claim it, tame it method here also. E.g. if you are feeling uncertain, just say “there goes my certainty trigger”

As you triumph over the fear / threat response doing the ‘new way’ will become easier and end up as the preferred way.

What about adrenaline junkies?

I’m not one 🙂  It would appear that they relish and look for the rush generated by the Fear/ Stress reaction in the mind and body

  • What will you now feel the fear about and then do anyway?

Is your Mind your Master? or Are You the Master of your Mind?

Why am I asking the question about who is the Master; You or your Mind?

Because it is important. Our brain is absolutely amazing at learning, think of all the patterns laid down in a lifetime, all those things that  can just be done automatically now, without consciously paying attention. Dressing, eating, washing,  walking, running,  riding a bike, balancing, swimming, changing gear in a car, speaking, reading, understanding language, knitting, sewing, playing an instrument, writing, etc. This is incredibly efficient and it is why the brain learns patterns, because to learn means you need to pay conscious attention and that takes energy, glucose. The brain uses  about 20% of the body’s energy supply, so the more it can do without constantly paying attention the better 🙂

Beliefs and the Child Brain

So what? Well, as per the slide above, there are a lot of things the brain learns as  a child, shoulds, musts, have tos, ought tos, for example that may, or may not, be helpful in later adult life. We learn beliefs about ourselves, for example “I’m not good enough! Be Perfect, Please everybody.” Of course if you hold a belief (A lens through which you perceive reality) you will always  have evidence to back it up, because I am right in this belief  and ‘look, see the evidence’ about me being not good enough! Hence low self esteem is perpetuated until!

Until what? Until you wake up and begin to think about this belief, to observe it. See it for what it really is:-

  • Something you learned
  • Taught to you by others
  • Useful at the time of learning, because it kept you safe

By doing this you begin the journey to becoming the master of your mind

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato – Socrates)

At this point, just begin to notice the beliefs. I will cover how to begin a process of change in a later post called “Feel the Fear and do it anyway”

  • What beliefs (lenses) have you formed about yourself? (Write them down) Look at them and really think about:-
  • When you learned them?
  • Where you learned them? From whom? (Note this may not be easy to do. It is worth it)
  • Are they useful now?

Continue reading “Is your Mind your Master? or Are You the Master of your Mind?”