When you embark upon making a change in your life there are two fundamental understandings about human nature that can make your transformation journey a lot easier.
These two principles of human nature are likely contrary to what you currently understand about how human beings work. So what are these two fundamental principles?
- You are not broken
- Behind every bad behavior is a positive intention
Let’s delve a little deeper into each of these.
YOU ARE NOT BROKEN
There is a common belief that human beings who struggle with behaviors and unhealthy mannerisms are somehow broken and that they are battling some sort of monster within.
We need to work on unlearning this misconception and here is why.
If we start from this negative perception when embarking on a transformational journey, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
When people who struggle with addictive behaviors “learn” to believe that the reason for their behavior is that they are somehow broken this considerably reduces their confidence in their ability to achieve their own desired change. Furthermore, our culture perpetuates this idea that once a person falls into addictive behaviors and patterns then they have a sort of “disease” to contend with for the rest of their life. This is not so!
Almost every one of my clients comes to work with me with this belief entrenched into their psyche. I help them unlearn this misconstruction and I’m here to help empower you too!
BEHIND EVERY BEHAVIOR IS A POSITIVE INENTION
Every human being is designed with a network of connected survival mechanism, from thought processes, to chemical reactions, to learned behaviors/ responses. And the goal of this intricate system is survival. Our human behaviors and mannerism are subsequently hard-wired into this intricate system, patched-in through various channels of intention.
That may be difficult to comprehend. How does say, a bad smoking habit, equate to survival? Well, through intention of course.
Way back when the smoking habit was being set (back in high school, let’s say) a smoker might have gained great benefit from the social interaction they got to experience. The likely intention of that behavior was positive in that it fulfilled their need for companionship. It doesn’t matter that that was years ago and now they aren’t even smoking around other people. It’s possible that the act of smoking has anchored-in as a complex loop, generating those feel-good chemical messengers that flood the body and transport them back to that time in their life when they were feeling great.
Intention is one of the most important components to locate when correcting any problematic behavior or involuntary response. We want to figure out what the positive intention is, for the part of us that are holding the problem behaviors together. Only then we can work to find and install a new default action, one that would fulfill that intention AND simultaneously support our best health. This is not only conceivable it is doable! For instance, the smoker in the example above might find it so much easier to become a Non-Smoker by swapping out their smoking habit for meaningful and routine social engagements, like joining a sports team or hosting group luncheons and parties.
So, if you find yourself wanting to make a change in your life to some problematic behavior you need to understand that these behaviors are driven by positive intention. When you know those reasons, you can look for alternatives to resolve this problem. Hear me say this with love…YOU ARE NOT BROKEN!
