Are We Living in a Mental Loop?. Research says yes. How hard is it to…
By: Scott Gese
Tags: Writing, Life, Habit Building, Motivation, Positive Thinking

Are We Living in a Mental Loop?

Image source: Allie Smith/Unsplash

Researchers who study the mind tell us we have somewhere between 60 and 80 thousand thoughts each day.

95% of these thoughts are the same repetitive thoughts we had the previous day.

Some are the habits we have formed and stored in our subconscious mind.

Like a software program on your computer, it’s always running in the background. You don’t pay any attention to it. The subconscious mind is constantly making decisions for you. It puts your body on auto pilot as you go about performing the exact same things you do almost every single day.

You might think you’re in control of your mind, but guess what? You’re not in control. Your conscious mind controls a paltry 5% of that precious real estate. Your subconscious mind is 95% in control.

Think about it. You are not much different than Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day.

That movie should have made you think about how similar your life is to this character.

Your day probably goes something like this…

Your alarm goes off at the same time every day.

You get out of bed,from the same side you sleep on every night.

Wonder into the bathroom, just like you did yesterday and just like you’ll do tomorrow.

Use the toilet

Take a shower

Brush your teeth

Shave

Get dressed.

Drink a cup of coffee.

Eat breakfast… or not

Get into your car.

Drive to work.

Work at the same job, with the same people, doing the same thing for the same amount of time.

You drive home.

You eat dinner.

You read, watch television or get on your computer.

You get ready to go to bed.

Guess what? Tomorrow won’t be much different.

Now think in more depth about each item on this list.

I’ll bet you do the exact same thing in the exact same way with each of these items.

You probably put your socks, shoes and pants on the same way. Left foot or right foot first.

You shower using the same routine to lather up and rinse off.

Brush your teeth the same way, and you use the same toothpaste and brush.

Shave the same way on the same days.

You drink the same coffee, hold your cup the same way. Maybe you even use the same favorite cup.

Leave the house around the same time in basically the same way.

You take the same route to work in the same car listening to the same radio station.

Eat your meals around the same time each day.

Watch the same television programs or look at the same web or social media sites.

Go to bed at the same time each night using the same routine as yesterday and tomorrow.

You could probably break things down even further than this, but you get what I’m saying.

Basically, we’re like automaton’s with a personality. A personality that you may not even like.

The thing about everyday routines is that if you want to make a change, it can be difficult. Even something as simple as changing your routine by putting on the opposite shoe each morning will seem “wrong”.

Your subconscious mind will begin to panic and start squawking at you. “wait a minute, this isn’t right. You always do the other shoe first.”

It will start giving you reasons why you shouldn’t change. Why you should go back to the old familiar way of doing things.

That’s with your shoes. What if you wanted to change something really important, like a bad habit or a personality trait?

Why would your subconscious mind balk at this?

A habit is something you have repeated to the point where your subconscious mind has picked up on it and uploaded it into its program. Habits are hard to break because your subconscious mind is protective of its programs. The evolution of the part of the brain where the subconscious resides has been programmed for self preservation.

Your habits create your personality. Do you have bad habits you can’t seem to break?

Getting rid of a habit is difficult. Thinking positive thoughts will not be enough. You need to rewrite the script.

Try thinking about the habit you want to change.

Habits reside in your subconscious mind. Its program runs behind the scenes and there’s no need to think about it. You need to bring the habit up front to your conscious mind where you can better deal with it.

Visualize your intention to install the new healthy habit you want to replace the bad habit with.

Visualization works. It’s a conscious intention to change. Think about how top athletes visualize their performance before they begin the event. This isn’t the only time they do this.

They visualize a perfect performance every day as part of their training in order to embed it into their subconscious mind.

They do more than just think about it. They visualize it with feeling and emotion.

Why does this work?

Dr. Joe Dispenza, In his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, says this. “Through mental rehearsal, the circuits in the brain can reorganize themselves to reflect our objectives. We can make our thoughts so real that the brain changes to look like the event has already become a physical reality.”

He goes on to say, “When we are truly focused and single-minded, the brain does not know the difference between the internal world of the mind and what we experience in the external environment. Our thoughts can become our experience. This notion is critical to your success or failure in your endeavor to replace old habits with new ones.”

Your emotional feelings (body) and your intentional thoughts (mind) need to work together. This way you prune your brain’s old neural connections and sprout new neural networks, creating new habits.

What are you thinking?

If you tend to negative self-talk with statements like “I’m no good” “I can’t do that” or worse. You will need to change these self-beliefs. Probably first.

If these negative thoughts remain part of your personality, you are defeating what you are trying to achieve and you will never make the change.

When athletes envision their performance. It’s flawless. They don’t envision themselves falling down, losing the race or telling themselves they aren’t good enough. Negative self-talk is not part of their training. It can’t be a part of what you’re trying to achieve either.

Your thoughts plus your emotions create new habits which create your reality.

You can literally change your brain, change bad habits and change your life. It may be more difficult than you would like, but it can be done. You can do this.

This article is a general outline. For a more in depth understanding of this subject, I suggest you take a look at the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza.

© Copyright 2019 by Scott A. Gese All Rights Reserved.

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