Journey to Faith

Journey to Faith
Follow your own path

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Breaking the Impulse Habit

It's a new year and most of us have areas we'd like to grow in. Perhaps we want to get a better handle on our finances or our diets, finally start an exercise routine, or like me, make meditation a part of your day. These are all habits. Habits, as you know, can be good or bad. They can move us forward into our destiny and they can keep us from moving forward as well.

The key to becoming all you want to be is creating good, healthy, habits and unlearning bad, unhealthy ones. Today's post is on a simple but powerful chain of events we all go through many times a day and how to use this process to develop better behavior patterns that move us forward into the life we dream of and deserve!

It all starts in our minds.
We each have more than 60,000 thoughts a day which include thoughts, memories, and feelings. These are sensory inputs into our behavior and actions. These sensory inputs are evaluated - appraised - by our consciousness. This is why mindfulness practice is so important. In order to take control of our habits and behaviors, we must first take control of the sensory inputs that are causing them. This is what mindfulness is all about.

The appraisal process. 
Whenever a thought, memory, feeling, or emotion rises up, our conscious (or perhaps not so conscious mind) evaluates it as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Each of our 60,000+ thoughts are evaluated instanteously and then what happens? We react, don't we?

The reaction. 
Reacting is usually not the proper thing to do in normal situations. We want to live a conscious life, meaning we make conscious choices including what to do about our thoughts, emotions, and feelings. They can control us and make us do or say things we will soon regret. How many times have we lost our temper because we misinterpreted what someone said and blasted a loved one? How many times have we reached for that sweet to calm our stress or heartache? These are examples of reactions and not conscious choice.

With every appraisal, our minds react with either aversion, craving, or neutrality. Depending on our level of conscious awareness, we will be manipulated by these stimuli. I don't know about you, but that is not how I want to live. I have also noticed that stress and high emotion, hijack our consciousness. We regress to child-like behavior which is never a good thing. So what comes next?

The action. 
After we have appraised the stimulus as either pleasant or unpleasant, and reacted with either a desire or a disdain for whatever it is, we proceed to the third link in this chain of events - we take action. So here's an example, I feel pain in my hip - unpleasant. I don't like pain - aversion arises. I take action; I get up from my chair, I stretch, I complain. Or here's another example. A loved one says something. I evaluate it from my own perceptions and history. This evaluation may or may not be correct. I interpret what they say as negative - aversion. Next I take action. I can either question what they mean (healthy) or I can yell at them (unhealthy). These are just two examples of this powerful Appraisal - Impulse - Action chain that we must take control of if we want to be more in control of our own lives.

What area of life would you like more control of? It's a new year so it is a perfect time to make change. Start with something small - like maybe not replying as quickly when someone says something. Most of us are too quick to answer and don't give enough thought before we do. Write and let me know how it goes for you. We can all learn from each other, yes?

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Stay tuned for more on this, and until next time,

Keep looking up!

Ariel Paz 








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