My heart is pounding into my throat. Every breath feels shallow and insufficient as his arm surrounds my neck like a muscular scarf. I feel his weight folding over my back. Paralyzed, my instinct is to surrender. I'm not prepared for this. I have no arsenal of well-rehearsed responses to draw upon. I hesitate too long. Then, I remember what to do. Awkwardly, my hands pull down on his choke hold, my leg lunges back, and I pivot and bow. He's lost his balance and falls. Rather than run, I reach out my hand to him. "Not good," I tell him. He nods in agreement - after all, he is my son - and we re-enact the scary scenario. Again and again, round and round we go. These self-defense maneuvers are new to me. Soon, however, they will become second nature. Embedded in my subconscious, my response to an assault will occur without thought.
How many of us claim to do things every day without conscious thought? We perform in ways that seem installed into our being like a computer memory card. Some repetitive behaviors help us and allow us to manage our lives successfully. Others may whittle away at the quality of our lives like a beaver's teeth chisel at a tree's trunk.
Habit is defined as "a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition." - The American Heritage Dictionary. Habits determine the movement of our lives much like muscles manipulate our skeleton through activity. Good or bad, habits are forceful, precise, unrelenting, and a part of our subconscious. We don't inherit them. Instead, we learn and practice them until they require little, if any, conscious thought. Habits also serve some purpose. They bring about a consequence that we desire or need, thus making it very difficult to change them.
Now, habits can range from the benign - like twisting your hair - to the more damaging variety, such as overeating or smoking. Chances are, you haven't inventoried your habits recently, so you may not even know what ones are serving versus sabotaging you. You may, however, be acutely aware of the consequences of your habits, such as being overweight or not achieving your fullest potential. Admonishing yourself for not having enough willpower or motivation, and then vowing to remove temptation or distractions seems like an effective strategy for initiating change. But it falls short of understanding your behavior's roots in the subconscious mind thus making change impossible. So, the overeater remains overweight, and the dreamer continues to dream instead of taking deliberate action.
If repetitive, recurrent behavior creates a habit, then removing the behavior would un-create it, right? Not exactly. Taking away a behavior that satisfies a need leaves a vacuum along with an unmet need. That space needs to be filled with a consciously chosen substitute behavior that can also meet your needs. Easy? No way. According to the translated Japanese quote of Mas Oyama, founder of Kyukoshin Karate, "One thousand times to learn something, ten thousand times to master it." That's a lot of times.
The contemporary, American version uses the arbitrary number of 21 days to create a new habit. True or not, a new habit has to be repeated over and over again. The subconscious rules our ingrained habits. Retraining the subconscious requires the conscious mind to communicate with, train and reprogram the subconscious.
The following steps, distilled for easier digestion, are effective in new habit formation and changing the less desirable ones.
1. KNOW YOURSELF - inventory your habits, both good and bad. Be honest. Write them down.
2. START SMALL - select one habit you want to change. Then choose the habit you want to have in its place.
3. ONE STEP AT A TIME - create a plan. Break it down into manageable steps. An abrupt overhaul of your subconscious mind rarely works.
4. VISUALIZE SUCCESS - mentally rehearse how you will react in a given situation. This is crucial to changing habits. If you can't see it, you can't achieve it. Walt Disney hired "Imagineers" to make his imagination a reality. You can be your own "imagineer."
5. FOCUS - sharpen your view of the benefit you are seeking. Remind yourself of the negative consequences you no longer want. Reel in distractions and stay the course. Diffused focus blurs your path.
6. BE CONSISTENT - practice, practice, practice. Whether it is 21 days or ten thousand repetitions, magic and instant results don't exist here. Consistent, applied behaviors do.
Habits can be our greatest helper or heaviest burden. You get to choose. To implement change requires commitment and perseverance. As I climb into bed, sore after two hours of twisting beneath bodies simulating an attack, plus practicing falling properly, I remind myself that this, too, will become second nature. I have more than nine thousand repetitions to go yet, but I will master it. Next, I will learn to stop biting my nails.
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