Sub consciously we create foundations and thinking patterns which we can also call our stories in our childhood because of many experiences. We start having these experiences in life right from our birth and many create our mindset even before we become conscious thinkers. Basically majority of the sub-conscious beliefs are formed in our early formative years from 0 to 7 years.
Our mind creates a story for every experience we have in our life. Our Stories create our beliefs. Our beliefs create what we value or not in our life. Our values are our inner compass and tells us which direction to go and what kind of choices or decisions we make. Then Our values create our identity. What we identify ourselves with creates our self-image. Our self-image determines what we are capable of (or not) doing and what we deserve (and don’t) in our life.
If we want to change our habits for good, then the questions we need to ask ourselves should not be ‘open ended’ but they need to be ‘close ended’. Habit forming is associated with our self-image or identity which are again interlinked with our beliefs, values.
If you are a vegetarian then you don’t eat meat, that’s it. Vegetarian is your identity. You do not take any time to take a decision. If you are a devout religious person who do not eat beef, then you don’t do it. You do not think and evaluate if you can eat beef or not here. You just do not eat it because you identify yourself with certain religious practices. In these scenarios people do not invest any energy or time in taking decision at all. It is a clear choice to make as your identity is linked to the habit. You have this habit of not eating meat because you are a vegetarian or certain religious person, this is your identity. Your belief is not to eat meat due to some genuine reasons stipulated by your religion. You value these reasons. Hence these values define your identity.
We call certain behaviors and actions as habits as we do them without putting much effort to decide whether to do or not. These are basically repetitive patterns we develop when we encounter an experience many times. Our brain develops these involuntary reflexes to take action when we face similar situations. Brain does this to save energy for other tasks which need mental and physical energy.
For example in order to avoid sugar in your diet, you may not be able to strictly follow this change unless it becomes a habit. Avoiding sugar and sugary foods in front of us becomes a mental torture every time we see them, unless we invest less time in making a decision to eat it or not to eat.
- What’s the belief that is needed here? – Sugary foods and junk foods are unhealthy and may cause harm in the long run. This could also mean that we believe that physical and mental health is key yo a quality life.
- What is the value here? – We value our Health and Wellness. We value a healthy lifestyle. We value good habits.
- How do we identify ourselves? – We value a healthy and fit lifestyle. Hence, we identify ourselves as a healthy and strong person. This also leads to a mental self-image of a fit, strong and healthy personality.
Let me show you the slippery slope we get into once we do not believe in right values.
- Unless we believe that junk processed food is harmful to us, unless we value our health, we do not identify ourselves as a healthy person who has strong reasons to remain hale and healthy.
- If we do not identify ourselves as a healthy fit person, then health is not one of our values to cherish, then we also believe that physical and mental health are not as important to us. This creates a mental self-image of a mediocre person with a casual attitude towards life. You justify this limiting self-image of yourself by feeding all kinds of reasons like it’s not worth it, what’s the use, it may not bring a huge difference in life, I am all happy well and fit even with the current sedentary lifestyle.
- We create a false story for ourselves and give all justifications and excuses for not having the discipline to lead a healthy life. Then we start actually living the self-deprecating story we formulated in our minds – that we don’t deserve to be fit, strong, healthy, then we validate by giving a proper reasons for our excuses.
- Finally we submit to our limiting thoughts sub-consciously, that it is fine to be how we are right now or you justify that it doesn’t matter whether you lead a healthy disciplined lifestyle or not.
*Do read the Disclaimer