Rescript yourself
Have you ever reacted to a situation in a way you later regretted? It’s the human condition to do so. If you’ve ever wanted to change these default reactions, there is a way.
I’ve been writing about the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey over the past few months. The book talks about how we are scripted with default behaviors in many situations. These scripts were learned through our experiences. For example, when kids “misbehave” parents have a tendency to react by loosing their temper. This is not a productive way to handle this and is something lots of parents struggle to improve. What if we want to change those scripts? It turns out that we can.
How to change our scripts
The main way to rescript ourselves is to notice our emotions and what we are thinking in the moment, and to choose a different response. In order to create these times were we notice these things and to have a different response on hand to use, we need to practice.
One of the methods discussed in the book to accomplish this rescripting is to use Affirmations and to practice them. Affirmations are statements that describe a situation, and how you wish to behave in such a situation. The book mentions there are several parts to creating an effective affirmation. The affirmation needs to be:
- Personal
- Positive
- Present tense
- Visual
- Emotional
The following is an example from the book related kids misbehaving and our reaction to it. “It is deeply satisfying, that I respond with wisdom, love, firmness, and self control when my children misbehave.”
Practicing
Now that we have our affirmation, we need to practice. This can be done by going somewhere quiet where we wont be disturbed and imagining ourselves in the situation. We need to try to be as realistic as possible. We need to visualize where we are, what we are feeling like the smooth chair we may be sitting on, what we are wearing like a sweater, and the feelings that we experience in that moment. Let’s take for example getting upset when children misbehave. We can visualize our kids winning or fighting with each other, we can see their faces, turning red, and the screaming escalating. We can feel the anger rising in our minds and then we can remember our affirmation and imagine ourselves being calm, listening and trying to help reduce the tension and resolve the problem. This practice links the emotion and visual memory to the affirmation so that in the moment we can remember it.
I’ve personally done the above practice and affirmation. I have noticed when those situations come up, I am able to remember my affirmation and use it to choose a different response. Sure, this does not happen every time, but it happens most of the time now.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
The affirmation and visualization methods discuss above leverage a proven cognitive therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This therapy says that the left side of your brain (which is the reasoning side) can notice the right side (your emotional side) and keep it in check/correct things. I’ve actually used this method for myself for many years for various reasons and it works great. There are many books on the subject if you wish to learn more.
Practice makes progress
If we wish the above methods to work, we can create the affirmation, we can practice it by visualizing ourselves and recalling the affirmation/visualizing ourselves with the new behavior we want, and finally we can use this new behavior in the moment. Like most things we do, this must be practiced daily for a period of time in order to stick. I’ve been reading that it usually takes about 30 days to form a new habit. I think this is generally true. It only takes 5 minutes of practice each morning, for example, in order to have this new tool ready to go for the whole day.
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