Habits and mindset: The combat for natural control

To follow our dreams, reach our targets and ultimately become that person that achieves everything we ever wished to become, for most people always tends to stay an unachievable dream. The conceptual thought that our driven ideas and feelings towards the dream never diminish, but reaching these dreams just never really becomes a reality. For most the excuse is life, always striving to the social structure of maintaining a household with financial demands and maybe if you have a family there will be financial dependents. At times venturing to achieve your goals may mean financial risk and with various responsibilities, the gamble just is not worth risk. These are the thoughts that radiate through most minds, the financial worry, concerns that it just might not happen or that the idea is something you can achieve.

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Our own mindset is a powerful thing. It helps our survival as the world shapes around us as life adds certain societal pressures, some would describe this as a feeling of being trapped in a continuous routine. Our belief to achieve is continuously being run down by subconscious thoughts that control over eighty-five per cent of our daily thoughts which lead to our daily routine choices. Our brain likes to learn everything in our daily world. This is a good thing; continuous action allows the brain to routine this action and then convert it into a habit. Once a habit embeds it stimulates a reward when carried out which makes changing the habit near on impossible. To elaborate, walk past a bakery that will emit a wonderful smell of freshly baked bread and cakes. The subconscious brain will immediately send a neuronal and hormonal signal around the body. These massaging signals will create a perfect scene, sending a conscious mind directly to hunger, a persons mouth will begin to secrete increased saliva and previous memories around that smell will radiate in a mind. All these subconscious factors are there to convince the conscious mind that you need to visit that bakery. For most, this will be impossible to ignore due to the reward system put in place over time. This can also the same for coffee. Why are people so willing to pay a large amount of money for a coffee that literally cost pennies to produce. These coffee giants know that people will not do this, coffee for years has been sold in another café for little money. Therefore, they knew that they had to offer something different, something that was priceless. A certain coffee giant, for example, researched for this answer. The initial idea was to create a training programme for the staff and offer lots of rewards, needless to say that well trained and cared for staff would surely create 'happy staff'. The research prolonged and found that this was partly the case. In conclusion, the research emanated towards customer service. Each customer would be warmly greeted and valued as if they were at home, they would feel comfortable. Leading on from this the staff were then encouraged to learn the customer's names, especially if they were regular. Lastly, the staff were also encouraged to speak to the customer and learn a little about the customer. Overtime customers felt a place of acceptance and warmth, a regular place they can go relax and have a friendly chat. Therefore, this continuous routine then becomes a habit, travelling to and from work included a stop off at a coffee house, the thought would just naturally appear into your mind by which it would then be hard to not carry out this action.

Habitual actions are also the same with thoughts, these subconscious thoughts will have stemmed from previous experiences either throughout early childhood or as an adolescent. The experience is only partly the answer, the real answer is how a person interprets and perceives that experience. The perception of an experience will not be like anyone else’s and could be as little as someone offering a negative comment. Over time these experiences and perception of the experiences then become interpreted by the subconscious mind. Unfortunately, in some cases these similar experiences over time will lead to negative thoughts about yourself ensuring you believe that you are incapable to take the next step, dampening your inner confidence. Continuous negative thoughts will stimulate a habitual response of negative thinking placing your mind into a less resilient mindset. However, this could be different, if a person tends to win at something a few times they then realise that they can achieve that one thing and become more committed and confident around that trait. This experience could be telling a small child that the picture they drew at school is the best picture you have ever seen. Events like these will build that sub confidence for a person to grab and build upon throughout their journey of life.

Changing habits are merely impossible to do. Therefore, at times people may easily fall into a hole of negative thinking and the thought of negative self-worth throughout their lives. Although habits can not really be changed, it is possible to create new habits that combat the old ones. For example, if you want to start running in the morning and never actually complete it, try changing your routine. Before you go to bed get your running clothes and running shoes ready, therefore, you have now made the effort so you might as well just go running. Once again this can be transferred to our mindset as well if you want to complete a task and have a lack of confidence or hear your thoughts making excuses not to overrun this thinking and complete the task anyway. Continuously, combatting that negative mindset will allow you to take that next step and become more resilient. Therefore, to achieve your goals and targets build your confidence gradually by setting smaller goals. Small achievements create a massive boost for our own mindset and allow the subconscious to habitually believe in you. Just remember, continuous action becomes routine, routine then become a habit. We are habitual creatures by nature to help us stay alert of our environment, use this to your advantage.

Further reading:

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change
• The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles

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