This week we\u2019re discussing the need to wake up from our trance. Did you know you were in a trance? No?
Don\u2019t be alarmed - we all are! We have our work trances, our parenting trances, our relationship trances, and whole shedloads of problem trances.
One characteristic of all these trances is that they are repetitive, or habitual. They\u2019re based on patterns we\u2019ve developed.
These trances can serve us, as they are the way that we learn. We learn by repetition, by creating patterns and internalizing our learnings to an unconscious level where we no longer need to consciously think about them.
Imagine if you still had to consciously think about all the things you\u2019ve learned since you progressed from being a helpless little baby, to the walking, talking, multitasking marvel that you are today! There\u2019s so much knowledge and expertise that we have to acquire to function the way we do. Our heads would explode if we had to make it all happen consciously!
But, happily, our brains learn to automate behaviour. When we do something repetitively, we form neural pathways in the brain. Each neuron learns to connect and fire with the next, and the behaviour gets set.
We are moving in and out of our trances, our automatic behaviours, all day long. We develop ways of being that become our go-to ways. So these repetitive patterns are very useful to us.
But what about when they are not? What about when they are problematic, when they cause us to suffer, or become phobias, when we are doomed to repeating dysfunctional behaviours?
Join me this week for the first in this two part series, and discover how to wake up from the trances you'd be way better off without.
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