How to create lasting change
Sara Klysing
8/14/20244 min read
First, ask yourself:
- Why do I want to change?
- What am I tired of?
- What thoughts do I no longer want to have?
Start by writing down the thoughts of your old self that are standing in your way.
Reflect on Your Life
Spend some time here and reflect. Meditate, sit quietly, and watch your thoughts. Meditation means to become familiar with. Do this without judgement—let the thoughts come and go. Hear the loud thoughts, the different voices, and feel the uncomfortable feelings.
"People often think they are doing meditation wrong when they get distracted by their thoughts, but this means you are doing it right," says Joe Dispenza.
"If someone you love is in front of you, sharing something they are excited about, but you have headphones in while listening to a podcast, you’re not going to hear what they are saying" (The Vagus Nerve Reset, p. 165).
If you want true and permanent change, you can’t take the old stories and habits with you. You have to leave these behind.
Recognise Patterns
"I want to change but… when I am around X, Y, Z, I feel X, Y, Z, and I feel like X, Y, Z again."
When our outer reality controls or influences how we feel, act, and think, we make ourselves victims of our circumstances. When you start blaming your outer circumstances for your inner reality, you have defaulted. We need to understand that we are the creators of our lives. We are not victims. We need to take that power back and stop giving it away. We are responsible for our personal reality. These stories have to end. If not now, when? You’ve probably repeated these stories over and over a million times. Let’s try a different story.
How we think, act, and feel creates our personality, which in turn creates our personal reality. If you want to change, you need to change your personality to change your personal reality.
Where Do We Start?
1. We need to become conscious of our unconscious thoughts.
2. Write them down, record yourself, or use whatever tool you prefer to become aware of your thoughts, behaviours, and feelings.
3. Never let an unconscious thought slip away unchecked again.
4. Write down the choices that you will not make anymore.
5. Review those choices, and you will become so conscious of them that you will not make those unconscious choices again.
When we don’t pay attention to ourselves, we behave unconsciously and default to our old personality. We let the body influence the mind to return to familiar territory. The moment we catch ourselves in unconscious behaviour is the moment change begins.
Change the Familiar Territory
After becoming conscious of your unconscious thoughts, you need to:
- Review your habits.
- Decide what you will no longer do. For example, "I will not watch TV. I will read books instead."
- Make a decision with firm intention. The amplitude of that decision needs to carry enough energy to cause your body to respond to your mind.
- Review the experiences and people you will stay away from.
- Be conscious of the emotions that lower your energy.
What’s Next?
- Make a different choice.
This is uncomfortable, and the voices in your head will get loud. Be prepared. You will experience "cravings" because you are taking away something the mind and body have done for years. The body has grown accustomed to these familiar feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. This is the becoming part—becoming something new.
But to become something new, you must leave the old behind. If you want to be wealthy or abundant, you need to start acting like a wealthy and abundant person. If you don’t know what that includes, spend some time researching. You can listen to podcasts, explore the internet, or find people who display these qualities and study them.
What Comes After?
- Start telling a new story of the future.
- Believe in that future more than in the past.
- Relax in your heart, and the energy will move right into your brain.
Thinking about your problems makes your brain fire and wire those memories, strengthening and keeping them alive. All those memories have an emotion attached to them because we have experienced them.
"Thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body," says Joe Dispenza.
If we are this powerful, then we can create the opposite with our thoughts. Fill your mind with how you want to be, how you want to think, how you want to feel. Then those things will fire and wire, making them stronger than the past. It is the overcoming process that is the becoming process. When you heal your heart, you heal your mind.
- What thoughts do I no longer want to have?
- What thoughts would the person I want to become have?
- How am I going to be in my life today?
Keep doing this with attention and intention. Eventually, it becomes the new voice in your head.