THE SCIENTIFIC FORMULA FOR CHANGE
I want to take some time to share some of my findings when it comes to the scientific formula to change. One of the biggest reasons why we love doing retreats is we get to see first hand how people make huge shifts in their lives. How this happens is something that I've been fascinated with for as long as I can remember.
The more time I've gotten to spend with many different people from so many different walks of life, it has given me a deeper understanding of what it takes to change. We have hosted people of all ages, races, wealth, professions and challenges on our retreats. I have been able to whittle it down to a couple of key tenets for what it takes for us to truly change and that anyone can practice.
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite teachers Dr. Joe dispenza is he says that where we place our attention is where we place our energy. Science is incredible now in terms of looking at how we can literally heal ourselves on a physiological level just by the power of our mind. It is the premise of the “placebo effect” when people who don’t actually receive medication heal because they think they believe they should.
Where we put our attention on physical parts of our body there is a huge increase in healing in that area. We see increasing hormone and enzyme production, pain levels drop and healing time is greatly reduced.
The same method can then be applied if you're wanting to shift or change your life on any other level. It requires us to start to put our attention on the thoughts that we’re having, the emotions they create and the behaviors and decisions they lead us to.
It requires a tremendous amount of effort, in some ways even more than physical change, to begin to look at ourselves this closely and to start the process of reprogramming what could be unconscious thoughts, emotions and behaviors. We become so ingrained in some of these habituations we don’t even realize that we can allow them to run our lives.
If you’re not familiar with Stockholm Syndrome, it is a phenomenon where someone being abused or held captive actually begins to develop positive feelings towards the person causing the trauma. In the same way we can become so familiar with negative or pessimistic thoughts that that becomes our normal. Neuroscience has discovered that we actually start to feel better when we have these thoughts and feelings because that is our normal.
When I first walked into yoga teacher training I remember asking my teacher if he thought I would ever be able to touch my toes because my hamstrings were so tight. He said something to me I’ll never forget, “be patient, just think about how long it took you to get your hamstrings to be tight.”
Think of anything worthwhile in your life, something that truly brings you joy, did it come quickly or did it require time and effort to truly see the benefits? In the age of instant gratification it is easy to get discouraged when we don’t see immediate results. You can’t order joy on amazon and expect it to show up at your doorstep, it requires effort.
I share all of this because I don’t want to give an idealized view on change. It used to drive me crazy when people would say, well happiness is a choice. Yes, and no. Happiness is the end product of a long series of recognizing thoughts, emotions and behaviors and a choice made to change.
How quickly can we catch ourselves when we go unconscious, how quickly can we make a shift? In neuroscience it is called the refractory period, essentially measuring how long do we linger in a thought or pattern of thought.
So what are our best tools? Gratitude. Gratitude is the fastest path back to joy.
By placing our attention on what we are grateful for in our lives, we are instantly creating chemical reactions in our body that bring us back to love and joy, incredibly powerful emotions. But what about when life is just too much? You know, work, stress, finances, relationships, etc.
That is when it matters the most.
The science of change says at the moment we want to habituate, to default into our old ways of being, it matters the most if we can shift. If you have ever started a new skill, think about how it was in the beginning (my inflexible hamstrings!) Those first attempts are always the hardest.
But like any skill, the more we practice the better we get. If you practice choosing gratitude, joy, love, abundance etc. enough times, especially when it is hard, you will start to see the environment around you respond. You won’t be willing to give your time and energy to things and people that don’t align with how you are training yourself to feel.
Well what about things in my environment that I can’t change like my boss? It is true we will come across situations that challenge our ability to stay relaxed and in joy. That is why meditation and mindfulness practices are so important. It is why going on a retreat and taking time to remove all of those distractions is such a powerful choice in seeing what truly matters, what truly requires your attention and what you can let go of.
I’ll dive in deeper in the coming weeks about the power of our intuition but for now let’s just say that when we take time to become more self aware, we begin to naturally remove these obstacles to our happiness. There is an energy to our thoughts, our emotions and our actions and the same way a magnet can attract certain things through energy, so can we.
