Loving behaviours are generally respectful, kind, and supportive. They are behaviours that create the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Loving behaviours develop trust, encourage openness, foster mutual benefit, and heal emotional wounds. Ideally, loving behaviours are given with no need for recognition or for personal gain. These conscious choices grow our potential, to bring about the best version of ourselves. It is a loving behaviour when we are present to the moment, aware of our thoughts and emotions, while not making decisions based on our fears. Thoughts become our words or self talk, which become our actions, which crystallize into mindful behaviours. The gift is to grasp the impacts our behaviours have on our lives. To keep building our awareness and gratitude for the fact that we are responsible for shaping our realities through being cognisant of our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Limiting behaviours, on the other hand, often become habitual choices that keep us stuck, that prevent us from reaching our goals, that ultimately sabotage our peace and happiness. Limiting thoughts produce negative inner dialogue, which translates directly to actions or inaction that reflect fears. We may fear our rising potential, lest we be held to a higher standard, or judged harshly if we can not live up to it consistently. Thus, we may unconsciously cling to our old routines. Fear of failure and ridicule may keep us addicted to living below our capacity. So, we advocate our responsibility, blame poor circumstances and others for outcomes we don’t want. Limiting behaviours typically are on automatic pilot, habitually under performing, disrupting our goals and misaligning our values. It is what we expect, what we have grown accustomed to, the easy path wins again at our expense. Fearing change we seek distractions that help us to avoid the truth that these comfy choices are leading slowly but surely to the demise of our self-worth. Again, it begins with thoughts, words, and deeds. Loving deeds risk effort, sacrifice, and rejection. Loving deeds also define us, build healthy relationships, and provide life meaning and purpose. In order to be more capable of loving behaviours we must replace limiting ones.
To replace limiting behaviours it is vital to understand how they are built and what sustains them. Our most persistent choices develop into behaviours which create mental and emotional pathways, neuro networks that are either strengthened or weakened, based on use. The more we behave in a certain way, the stronger that behaviour becomes. Questioning the rational behind how we behave, is a grand step towards self-awareness. Knowing our intentions, what motivates us, and the values that we wish to extend to the world, keeps us mindful of our loving or limiting actions. If we assess that our intentions are not honourable, respectful, or loving, we can choose the opposite course. Choosing alternatives due to our increased awareness, weakens the behaviours we wish to eliminate, while strengthening our contribution to others and ourselves.
Neurologically, taking on new behaviours often feels like bushwhacking through a dense jungle. Eventually with repetition, the paths we chose becomes more worn, until with consistent practice it evolves into a superhighway. Traveling well used highways requires less effort, and its familiarity gives us relief. Thus, new pathways when persistently practiced, transform from donkey trails to super freeways. Learning to perform a parallel stop on skis, is an example of this transition. At first it is a little scary and requires your full attention, the neuron pathways are new, and not well traveled. After much practice, through failed and successful attempts, those neuron pathways become smoother, faster and require hardly any mental effort. It has developed into a dependable skill. Telling the truth is another example, where the more we focus on being honest, the easier and more effortless this behaviour becomes.
Limiting behaviours are built on erroneous thinking, bogus assumptions, negative conditioning, and low self-esteem. They are sustained due to lack of awareness and inaction to challenge our false beliefs. Limiting behaviours survive because we allow them to. We make excuses that this is not the time to change, or we falsely accept our inability to adjust. We lie to ourselves, telling stories to accommodate the excuses that support the limiting habits that are stopping us from getting what we want. There comes a time, in our lives, when all our excuses run out. When we are unwilling to continue this limiting path, no matter how well traveled, no matter how accustomed we are, we can not accept these behaviours any longer. That time typically occurs when the pain of our poor choices is more painful than the fear we have of changing. Examples of limiting paths or dysfunctional behaviours are endless. Eating when we are not hungry, being impatient, being over-reactive, putting our needs ahead of the needs of others. Poor self care, fear of failure, and degrading self talk, are just a few. The list is endless, as is the list of behaviours that contribute to our well-being and the greater good of others. Like, kindness, compassion, growing competencies, acquiring knowledge, and gravitating towards reality, even when illusion is more convenient or comforting.
Habitual behaviours like overeating or overreacting are challenging to change as they have become superhighways, completely familiar, well entrenched routines that seem effortless, like a well practiced ski stop. At one time the overeating made us feel better, so we made that action a regular practice, until it became habitually an unconscious response to stress. Chronic overeating may still give us pleasure, a distraction from our pain, yet it comes with a price tag that taxes our health, emotions, and relationships.
Limiting behaviours cause feelings of being out of control, guilt and shame over a path which is luring us away from our goals. The distraction has become a dysfunction, it goes fast, but in the wrong direction. We may wrongly accept this path as genetically determined, or our fate. The guilt comes from us knowing deep inside that this notion is simply not true. We start realizing that ‘we get what we allow’. Permitting unhealthy or hurtful choices is the habit we no longer can afford. The truth is that we all have issues and behaviours that are not loving, logical or sustainable. Most of us are at various stages of transforming issues that no longer benefit us, our family, or our community. Most of us have issues, regardless of our age, that have become chronic limiting behaviours that run silently in the background, like a virus hacking our progress, and our dreams. So, how do we replace limiting with loving?
To stop limiting behaviours we must acknowledge the pain it is causing us and change our mental and emotional relationships to those thoughts. Example: replacing our relationship with food as being a comfort and distraction during stressful times, to food being a means to nurture health and vitality. Two vastly different relationships resulting in opposing approaches and outcomes. For lasting positive change to occur, we must challenge the truth of our thoughts. It is vital to coach ourselves to become increasingly more aware of our thoughts that develop our negative internal dialogue, that produce the same old disappointing reactions to life. It is important to understand that we are all dysfunctional, even the most experienced and evolved people have issues. As Bruce Lee said, “Only the fool doesn’t know that they are a fool.” We all do foolish things, so exchange the guilt, shame, and self-loathing for compassion and acceptance that we will screw up. Failure is integral to learning, learning is essential to loving. The goal is to learn from failures, ours, others, and to adapt. Treating ourselves like a cherished friend that we forgive and love unconditionally is tremendously helpful. Once we recognize our issue, it is time to replace that unwanted superhighway with a new healthy path. The new behaviour will likely be difficult at first. New paths are a struggle, or they are an adventure, depending on one’s perspective. Yet with each attempt, gradually our minds remap, and our neuron pathways become stronger while the old behaviour due to lack of use becomes less attractive as an option, eventually it fades and becomes obsolete.
Example: we feel anxious and our habit is to eat, medicate, or isolate, to avoid our discomfort. However, we are becoming more aware of the connection of our anxieties to our thoughts, so we challenge our thinking. Is food the right answer now, or is there something else? By challenging limiting habits, we attend directly to the issue, our anxiety. We ask ourselves, is it true, or a fabrication and often an exaggeration of our fearful thoughts? Now, when stress emerges, we can internally acknowledge our issues. We may choose to substitute overeating with going for a walk, breathing, meditating or journal writing. The dysfunctional path will die a quicker death when we refuse to accept that it is an option. Replace degrading thoughts with more truthful and kinder and inspiring thoughts about who we wish to be. Replace unhealthy habits with our first instinctively healthy alternative. With every dysfunction that we successfully transform, future issues are overcome due to our Zen like commitment to loving rather than limiting ourselves.
Masterful people are mindful of their thinking, weeding out the negative while nurturing the positive. Their actions reflect their beliefs and values, as personal integrity grows, so does self-worth. They know themselves more intimately, therefore they welcome rather than fear change. They embrace difficulty, and the growing pains that yield insights and courage to achieve their vision. The more we embrace change around our dysfunctional pathways, the more skilled we become at learning and loving. We become the master architect of our lives, by connecting to our logical minds and our loving hearts.
Namaste
Instructor Chris
