Breaking free from self-limiting habits

Breaking free from self-limiting habits

by Innocent Mwangi

‘We need to think differently to shift our paradigms

to a new, deeper, “inside-out” level’ – Stephen R. Covey

In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey describes habits as “consistent, often unconscious patterns which constantly, daily express our character and produce our effectiveness, or ineffectiveness”.

Who we are and what we become is a direct result of our habits. It is in the realm of habits that our character is born, nurtured and outwardly expressed. What we see from the outside is a direct reflection of those deeply embedded habits that have gradually, steadily and consistently ingrained themselves into our psyche. Our behavior is therefore informed by these habits, which with time become so deeply ingrained into our minds that changing them is like attempting to break mountains with bare hands.

Breaking free from these deeply-embedded habits is a tall order, especially if they have been acquired over a long period of time. The longer it takes to acquire certain habits, the more difficult it is to break them. And this is not necessarily a bad thing – especially if the habits acquired are positive. Positive habits should be encouraged, even developed where they are lacking.

According Mike Bressica, success comes from behaviors, which start out as thoughts. To change your habits or behaviors, you will need to have different thoughts. What occupies your mind – your thoughts – propels you to behave in a certain way. If you don’t like the results of your behavior, all you need to do is to change your thoughts. The Bible talks of renewing our mind as a way of transforming ourselves into good, acceptable and perfect people that always seek to do the will of God (Rom 12.2).

Renewing or shifting from our current thoughts to those that we desire brings about transformation or change in our lives. This is what is known as having a paradigm shift – adopting a new way of thinking, of doing things, of behavior.

The good thing about habits is that they are acquired over time through learning, nuances, brainwashing and experiences. Since they are acquired, they can be replaced by changing the thought patterns that fostered them in the first place.

To replace negative, self-limiting thought patterns, which Mike Bressica calls “mental patterns of failure”, we must set as a first goal to reduce the impact of these patterns. And this cannot be done overnight. Just as it took time to acquire these mental patterns of failure, it will take time to release them and replace them with ‘mental patterns of success’.

Paul talking to the Church in Rome expressed his frustration with his inability to rein in his patterns of failure. It appeared to him that he was fighting a losing battle with his mind as he found himself doing the very evil that he did not want to do; and not doing the good that he wanted to (Romans 7: 19).

Like so many of us, Paul was at a crossroad. On one side lay the old self-limiting patterns of failure; and on the other, his desire to release these negative patterns, which always led him to do evil, and replace them with those that would propel him into a transformed life of doing good.

Highly successful people are those who rid themselves of their patterns of failure by brushing off distractions. When you have no pattern of failure limiting your progress, you are able to overcome temporary setbacks at the thought level. Since the battle for success is won or lost at the thought level, your success or failure in this arena is what makes you successful or unsuccessful. Success comes naturally when you learn how to control your thought patterns. As Bressica says, if you muster the art of thought control, you will not be ‘tempted to act opposite to what you know is best. You can keep fear at a minimum. Doubt is nowhere to be found.’

But how do you unlearn limiting thought patterns that you have picked up from childhood? How do you break down inscrutable blocks of negative habits that have been distilled and cemented into your psyche since childhood? To merely tell you to change your paradigm would be as vain as telling a hungry person to be filled without giving him food to eat. What we hear, see, experience or sense has a direct bearing on the formation of our habits – which are informed by thoughts, and which are then acted out in the form of behavior.

Thoughts are the foundation on which our habits are formed. These habits, depending on their nature, in turn inform our actions or behavior – and success or lack of it solely depends on the actions we take. To take that crucial first step in starting your own business, you must first of all unlearn the employee mentality and start seeing yourself as a successful entrepreneur.

But to achieve this paradigm shift is no mean fit. What with years of being told to study hard so that, when you grow up, you will get a good job? To break away from this mold of thinking and start seeing or thinking yourself as a successful business person requires much more than positive affirmations such as ‘I can do it’. If ‘I can do it’ is out of tandem with your thought pattern, then, try as much as you will, you can’t do it.

I believe with all my heart that if you can think it, you can do it. The writer of the Book of Proverbs (23:7) knew this all too well when he said that ‘as one thinks in his heart, so is he’. Your thoughts define the kind of person you become. Countless times we blame external circumstances while in reality the core cause of our failure can be found in our thought patterns. Negative thoughts are like leeches; once they attach themselves into our psyche; it is very difficult to remove them.

But this article would be vain if does not, at the least, show you how you can overcome negative thought patterns. Mike Bressica has isolated eleven core strategies of releasing or letting go of self limiting patterns. Here they are:

1. Let go of the failure self image
In short, you must stop seeing yourself as a failure. People may call you a failure but you must not accept their version of yourself. To succeed in life, you must learn to let go of the self-image of yourself as a failure. This begins by a realization that you have some level of control in determining the kind of person you become. You must believe that the habits that have made you a failure today were not cast in stone – they can be changed, and the first step towards changing them starts with believing that you have what it takes to change them. To be successful, you must first and foremost believe that you can be successful – even when everyone says you are good for nothing. It’s your version of the truth that matters; not theirs!

2. Shrinking the images, sounds and feelings of failure
As we have seen, habits are acquired through the things we see, feel, and hear. Since these habits are embedded into our psyche, we cannot uproot them in a flash. This is virtually impossible! The only way to undo these habits is to start chipping away at them brick by brick, and gradually they will start to shrink, and finally fade into oblivion. Instead of seeing an insurmountable obstacle ahead of you, see how irrelevant it becomes when you go round it, or use a bulldozer to flatten it out. As you engage your mind in this exercise, you will start seeing images of possibilities, and the once insurmountable obstacle will start shrinking – and finally fade into oblivion.

3. Stop pointing fingers elsewhere
If something has gone wrong because of a mistake you made, don’t pass the buck by blaming your problems or failures on circumstances or other people. The first step in correcting a mistake is by accepting its existence, and your role in it. If it aint broke, don’t mend it! But if it is, burying your head in the sand won’t mend it. You must accept your mistakes or failures; then see yourself overcoming them!

4. Get rid of doubt

You say you "can't"? News flash! You can! The ‘I can’t’ mentality is the primary cause of procrastination. It is the source of your inability to set goals and your tendency to quit too soon. As long as you believe you can’t do something, you will never take the actions required to attain success. On the other hand, as long as you see yourself able to do something, that will be the beginning of assured success. To win the battle in the field, you must first win it in your mind by believing, without a doubt, that you can – and the only person that can stop you is, well, you!

5. Discard positive anchors that support unsupportive tasks, people and places
I have heard drug addicts say that they feel ‘relaxed’ when they are ‘high’. This ‘feeling relaxed’ is a positive anchor or attribute, but which supports a habit that’s known to be destructive, sometimes even fatal! Whatever you do, do not attempt to justify negative habits by attaching positive attributes to them. In other words, don’t look for a good excuse to warrant justification of a bad habit. The statement; “I only work best under pressure” seem to justify “pressure” as a prerequisite for ‘best’ results. And yet this very admission may point to serious flaws in planning or inability to work without supervision. To succeed, we must discard anchors that support tasks, people and places that fuel failure. You should eject from your mind any "attractive" thing that has the potential to steer you from your goal. You must avoid the lure of unsupportive people, places, activities (inactivity, too) that keep you from doing what must be done.

6. Discard negative anchors that don’t support supportive tasks, people and places

Negative anchors such as “I hate prospecting” keep you from doing what you must do to succeed. As Mike Bressica says, you need to re-groove the tracks of your mind so that you won't harshly reject the things you need to do; and the people, places and things that could help you attain your goals. If you must study hard to pass exams, anchors such as “I hate reading” can only help you in not passing the exams. These anchors foster failure as they go contrary to what you desire most – success.

7. Rising above fear and worry

Many of us spend our time focusing on what's not perfect; what could go wrong. We must learn to steer our focus away from fearful thoughts that prevent us from achieving our goals. Worry causes procrastination, nagging, arguments, unhappiness, rage, jealousy, obsession and inactivity. When you worry endlessly about how your recommendations will be received by people, you will never get to the task at hand. Don’t be too harsh on yourself by worrying about how people perceive you. The only place that worry can take you is nowhere. If you want to get somewhere, you must learn how to suppress your fears and worries long enough to do what must be done.

8. Avoid the feeling of overwhelm

One of the mental patterns of failure that most people suffer from is the tendency to perceive tasks as too hard or difficult to accomplish. When you set out with this mind-set, what you are telling your brain is that it does not have the capacity to process the task at hand. We must teach our brain to stop blowing up the "size" and difficulty of normal tasks and decisions and start “seeing, hearing and feeling” them as manageable. When you say that a task is too big a job for you, you are conditioning your mind not to process the task.

9. Stop blowing up mistakes, setbacks and delays
Irrespective of how meticulous you are; things will occasionally go wrong. If you start a project with the mentality that you ‘cannot afford to fail’, you exert undue pressure on yourself. To attain your goals, you must learn to keep mistakes, set-backs, delays and any unexpected circumstances in their proper perspective. You cannot plan for mistakes, setbacks or delays – they come unexpectedly. When you set off with this mind-set, your chances of success are higher since the limiting burden of what could go wrong will have been offloaded from you. And when adversity happens, don’t rail down on your self-esteem by saying things like ‘it’s over”. When you feed your mind with ‘can’t do’ or ‘it’s over’ messages, you limit the possibility of dealing with adversity. Instead, when the unexpected happens, consider it as a golden opportunity to see what you are capable or incapable of. How you instantly view or respond to adversity will predict how high you can rise, or high deep you can fall – and if you are in a business that cares for the bottom line, this information is critical, especially if your company is in a crisis.

10. Eliminate disaster thinking
Disaster thinking takes worry to a higher, more profound level. It incapacitates one to the extent that it results in paralysis or overreaction to some possible future challenge. Learn to condition your mind to see disasters as situations that can be overcome or dealt with. People who suffer from panic attacks have a disaster thinking pattern. They blow out of proportion any potential or suggested threat by constantly focusing on the threat and expecting the worst possible outcome. Don’t focus on the worst that could happen. In the first place, it may never happen; and if it happens, worrying about it won’t take it away.

11. Eliminate physical symptoms of stress
Mike Bressica says that the human body can be very resilient against stressors of life if it is trained or programmed to respond positively; but if not, it is susceptible to physical illnesses, which are caused by mental stress and strain. Incidences of headaches, diarrhea, irritable bowels, heart troubles, immune deficiencies, infections, high blood pressure, hair loss, panic attacks, cancers and more are mainly as a result of stress – and stress can kill! We need to train our mind and bodies to respond positively under any given circumstance. When we do this, we will eliminate the possibility of stress-related diseases catching up with us.

As I conclude, I believe that over 80 per cent of the setbacks that we face in life have their origin in how we think or react to life’s issues. How we think informs how we behave, and consequently the kind of actions we take – and the success we attain in life is largely dependent on the actions we take.

Most of the limitations that we encounter in life are self-imposed – and therefore can be overcome. As I have mentioned above, the battle is either won or lost at the thought level. If you feed your mind with thoughts that influence positive behavior, you will take positive actions and therefore achieve positive results. On the other hand, if you feed your mind with negative thoughts, you will behave negatively and take negative actions – resulting in failure.

My call to you today is to embark on an unlearning or relearning process. You need to unlearn all the negative habits that take your efforts away from success. On the other hand, if you have managed to inculcate positive habits in your life, you need to keep relearning these habits to ensure that doubt or failure will never have a foothold in your life. If you keep doing this constantly and consistently, you will, without doubt, attain gratifying success.