Changing Behaviour Patterns

SUMMARY

• Do you have to consciously think about your poor behaviour to get it to come up or does it just turn up out of the blue without an invitation?
• Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence and our Behavioural Self-Control by talking about changing our behaviour patterns.
• The process is a series of four R's and the end result of this process is another R and that is to rewire our brain:
• Step one: Recognise.
• Step two: Reject.
• Step three: Replace.
• Step four: Repetition.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Do you have to consciously think about your poor behaviour to get it to come up or does it just turn up out of the blue without an invitation? Hi, this is Grant Herbert, International Influencer and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today, I want to continue our conversation around Emotional Intelligence and our Behavioural Self-Control by talking about changing our behaviour patterns.

You and I have been doing things a certain way for many years. Our beliefs, the meanings we put on things, and the conditioning over the years have created a set of neural pathways in our brain that says, "When this happens, I do that."

Has there ever been anything that you've decided that you want to change? Whether it be your health, the way you operate at work, or any type of behaviour. The reason it can be difficult is that you are fighting against a deeply ingrained pattern in your brain, backed up by limiting beliefs.

What I want to do today is give you a logical process that you can take yourself on whenever it is that you're wanting to change your behaviour. This is a four step process based on four R's, with the end result being another R: rewire our brain.

Through neuro-plasticity, we know that at any age, we can relearn things. This process works on doing that in a logical sequence so that you get the result that you want.

Step one in the process, the first R, is recognise. We want to recognise that the thought pattern, the belief, the mindset, or the behaviour we are currently using is not serving us. It's not actually giving us the result that we want. We need to recognise it even when our "mini-me" shouts at us that it's "fake news". If I recognise that me tooting the horn at someone is only creating more anger and frustration for me, then I'll want to do something about it.

Step two and the second R is to reject. It's one thing to recognise the behaviour, but unless we reject it, we're not going to do anything about it. We need to have that conversation with our inner dialogue and go, "No, no, no. I know you think that it was doing this for us, but it's not." We've now rejected it as being something that we need in our life.

Step three, the third R, is to replace. If we recognise and reject it, but we don't have anything else that we can do instead, we'll very easily go back to what we were doing before. We need a new behaviour, a new thinking, a new strategy. For example, if someone is trying to stop smoking, I might get them to reach for a carrot stick instead. We need to give ourselves something else to do, instead of the old behaviour.

Step four is repetition. We need to repeat the new behaviour over and over and over again, so that you then rewire that part of your brain. You've now got a neural pathway that's built stronger than the old one. That only comes with repetition and that's how neuroplasticity works.

So, we've got a four part process: recognise the behaviour, reject it as being useful, replace it with something that's resourceful, and then repeat that process over and over again so that we rewire our brain. What we now have with this process is the ability to change our behaviour.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation by talking about two critical elements that we need to be able to make all these changes, and that is support and accountability. I'll see you then.