Unforgettable Love Story

Being able to reprogram ourselves is a very important skill to have. If you can reprogram yourself then you can choose who you want to be and set out to make it so. It is particularly useful when you discover some automatic behavior; either a thought or action, that is causing you to suffer.

Later I will share a fantastic story of deliberate and difficult inner change that I underwent which had a dramatic and noticeable effect in the outer world. It looks very much like a miracle. But first let’s talk about the basics.

Old behaviors, ones that go way back, too many people think they cannot change them. This is just not so! How is it that you came to have the programming that you have? Unfortunately most people don’t know, and worse they blame it on outside circumstances.

Be Selective About Your Entertainment

Certainly the outside world has done its share to program you. News, movies, magazines, books, advertising, other people have had a very strong influence on your life. This is one of the reasons it is so very important to be selective about what and who you give your focus to, especially early in your reprogramming efforts. You need to ask yourself, “When I focus on this TV program, when I listen to this person speak, do I feel good? Do I feel empowered, light hearted, happy, loving?” If not I suggest you turn your focus towards something that does feel good, which in effect will turn you away from them, at least until you have successfully reprogrammed your mind.

Repetition and is the key to reprogramming. If you study hypnosis, or marketing which involves hypnosis, you will find that repetition is a key element behind their success. It takes time and deliberate conscious effort to reprogram yourself. But the results are worth the effort.

Any skill we wish to develop requires repetition, or practice, for it to become a habit or automatic. The first few times you rode a bike you fell down frequently, but if you continued riding, falling down became such a rare thing that years could go by between falls.

I learned to roller-skate on the old fashioned 4 wheel skates. I had an aggressive style and skating technique, which relied heavily on stopping via the toe stops. When I changed to rollerblades I automatically tried to stop on the non-existent toe stops and fell on my face, twice. After that I decided I had to reprogram my body so that it would respond correctly to this new toy. Even though I could skate aggressively, and with style, I had to slow myself down and teach my body a new way of stopping. It took patience but within about 4 weeks time I was skating like crazy as if I had been on rollerblades for years and I wasn’t falling.

Changing our psyche is a very similar process. Here are some of the key steps or elements involved:

* Slow Down. While the changes are in progress we need to slow down and change our expectations of life and of ourselves. We will make mistakes, love yourself anyway. You need to be okay with mistakes that have already been made, but then be firm and stick with your reprogramming efforts.

*Feel Your Feelings. We need to check in frequently to make sure we are still on track. Something that felt good at one time may not feel good at another time. We need to feel, and notice when something does not feel good and then notice our focus, notice our thoughts. What are we thinking, what are we feeling, how do they relate? Where is our focus? We need to notice what our automatic reaction is and become aware of the programming that is to be changed.

*Meditation and Contemplation. Is meditation a habit for you? It really is necessary in some form or another. Is it a joy for you? It can be and will be if you are doing it correctly. It should be as important in your day as eating, sleeping, bathing and exercising (if you are leaving one of those items out put it back in!) You need to be so skilled at meditation that you can sit down in a moment of deep suffering and bring yourself back into balance, back to peace. This requires practice, repetitive, ongoing, daily practice. If you say you don’t have time for meditation then what you are really saying is that you don’t have time to have a good life.

*Visualizations. We need to visualize the way we want to be and the way we want life to be. We need to script our response to life for specific situations that come up and tie it to the triggering events. I give an example of doing this in the story below. This takes only 30 seconds to 2 minutes to do but should be repeated as often as you can until the change registers in your response. Your scripted response should be loving, it should feel good to contemplate it.

*Stop Negative Thinking. During your visualization time, if negative thoughts occur stop them and counter them. You need to become skilled at finding new ways to view the situation such that you feel better about it and can respond from a loving place. Practicing this when you feel good will make it easier to do when you feel bad.

*RESULTS. When you get results, you need to remember them, re-live them, use them to re-inspire yourself in the future when you are feeling blue and when you feel like you are not making any progress.

Continued in Reprogramming Anger…

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable - A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

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