Can you stop eating your nails? Hummm… I knew
you would act just like that! Did you lose your job again? Can’t you make
something about the way you treat other people?
When people
want you to change, that means your behavior. However, it is not that easy as
you probably already know.
Behavior is
influenced by the way we think and see the world, which may be called attitude and awareness. So, if you are able to change any behavioral feature but
you did not change your attitude and awareness, that will come back when you
less expect.
For instance,
if you are able to stay at a job longer than normally, that is something to
celebrate. However, part of the reason you used to lose your job was your bad
temper and it happens in this job each person is nice; what will happen when
your boss hires someone who starts to upset you then?
The inner concept
you have about yourself tells you something like this: whenever someone starts to create problems for you, just move away from
that person. That means your time in this job is limited by those circumstances;
when you change your awareness, you will be able to keep any job.
This is why
this idea of quick change or 21 days to
get rid of a habit is a myth if you don’t change those invisible aspects
along with those nasty habits.
How to
change the way you think? How to change who you are? That means deep reflection
and inner work; it means you need a method that helps you with that too.
In my
experience, the easiest part is attitude and there is a basic 3-step process
that may help a person to do that:
- Identify. First of all you have to understand your
attitude; it works as a template for your thoughts so that when you react to
situations or you start to reflect on something, those thoughts will work a
pattern. Identifying and understanding the pattern is the first stage of a
personal change. OK, I have the tendency
of being pessimistic…
- Check and change. During sometime – ok, it can be 21 days… – you
will be your own observer. You may use some tools like meditation or a journal,
but the main important point is to be aware of those patterns; whenever a bad attitude
emerges, stop a few seconds or minutes and review it, replacing it with the
thoughts or ideas you would like to have instead. I think I will lose this job… Wait a second! Why am I even thinking
like this? I will work with quality and intensity, and I will prepare myself
better by studying and researching, improving that quality.
- Dare. After a while, you will feel things have
changed and bad patterns are not emerging as much as before, or have completely
disappeared. That is the point when you have to challenge yourself and get into
a situation where you will test your ability, see what happens with you and go
back to the first stage of this process. I
will go and talk to my boss, seeing if there is the possibility of losing my
job, but I will do that from a positive point of view, knowing how capable I am.
With your
awareness, it is a similar process, but deeper and subtler. Meditation is probably
the best tool when you feel it is not enough to change attitudes, and the
reason is that by meditating, you have another perspective of who you are, beyond
all labels you have tagged in yourself; so, you can identify that you want to
change, being an observer and eventually, challenge yourself to see if the
change really happened.
When both
have changed you will feel a behavioral transformation. Even if one of those – attitude
and awareness – has changed, you will feel some level of transformation.