How to Change any Behavior

The secret to easy and permanent behavior change.

Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session

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Find out more about my work: www.melindagerdungcoaching.com

Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session


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Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
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Transcript

0:22

Hey my friends. I want you to think of something that you've been doing that you don't want to be doing. Something that you want to stop doing, but haven't been able to stop. Could be biting your nails, apologizing when you don't need to, over eating ,whatever. Just pick something-- we all have something. And then I want you to ask yourself what is the wisdom in doing this thing? What is the value of doing this? What am I getting out of it? And your brain is gonna want to say nothing. There is no value in biting your nails. But I want you to put that aside. I want you to approach these questions holding the assumption that there is definitely something valuable in doing this thing. Because I promise you that there is. Because you are not stupid or incapable or crazy or lazy or any of the things that we tell ourselves that we are when we cannot make ourselves stop doing something. It's not true. The truth is that whatever the value is, whatever you are getting out of that thing, is is important to you. If it wasn't important, it would be easy to stop. The fact that it isn't easy to stop means that it's something important. It's something to pay attention to. It is a need of some kind that is being fulfilled through this thing. And once you understand what the need is, then you can begin to satisfy that need in a different way. And this is the way that you stop doing the things you don't want to do. But as long as we're telling ourselves fake stories, like there's something wrong with me, we don't go searching for the deeper need. And then we end up stuck repeating the same action over and over and over again because we never find what's driving it and I'll give you an example from my own life. So there was a period of time where I was really busy. While I'm still busy, but let's be real, that is pretty much a constant. But I was using that busyness as an excuse for not doing things that I enjoyed. I was rarely, if ever, giving myself breaks. The only breaks that I really had when I was not working was when I allowed myself to read while I ate dinner. And that was it. But it turns out that I needed that break. Like I was craving that break. But I only got one while I was eating. So I'm sure you can predict where this is going and what ended up happening. I ended up eating a lot. I started over eating. And I actually didn't notice at first. It seems like you would right, but I just didn't. I just noticed that I was outgrowing my clothes. And I was like what is going on? What's happening to me like, Are my hormones changing? What is this? So I got the book Bare by Susan Hyatt and I started reading that-- which is a great book, by the way. And she started talking about mindful eating like paying attention to what your food tastes like and what you feel like when you're eating and her whole thing was like being present during mealtimes. And I had so much resistance to that. I was like But then I won't get to read my books anymore! And that was the lightbulb moment for me. I wanted to read books. And if I didn't allow myself the time to read books, I was going to end up doing it anyway. Except while I was eating. So I started letting myself read books. I schedule some time I still schedule time every week during my week to do nothing but read. And you know less gets done, right? I'm not accomplishing the same volume that I was when I was working all the time. But I'm not over eating anymore either. I eat when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full. And I don't want to make this about weight loss because I'm not even about that. I just want to illustrate that there's a reason why you're doing the things that you're doing. And finding that underlying reason allows you to satisfy whatever need is driving the action and satisfy it with an action of your choice instead of whatever the default happens to be. In my case, what I wanted to do was read books. But at a deeper level, we could even look at why I wanted to read books. Like what feeling Am I getting from reading the books? Because whatever feeling that is, that is what I'm really after. We are always ever just either trying to chase a feeling or avoid a feeling. It really is all about our feelings. So for instance, if I didn't want to be reading books, like if that wasn't the answer for me, if that was yet another action I didn't want to be taking, I could still find another way to satisfy that need by finding something else or some other way to get the feeling that I'm after with the reading the books. You might not know other ways to get the feeling you're after. Like nothing might come to you immediately for like how to create this feeling in your life that you're after. And that's okay. Because you can play with different things and see what satisfies and what doesn't. You can take a scientific approach to it and kind of hypothesize and test. And it's okay if it takes a little bit to figure it out. At the end of the day, it's something worth figuring out. If you'd like some facilitation for finding this underlying need or this underlying feeling, you can schedule a session with me and we'll get to the bottom of it. The link will be in the show notes. Until next time, my friends be well