If you are like me and many other people, the longest you
stick to your new year resolutions is at most three weeks and then everything
is back to normal right? Yet that does not bother you right? You keep setting
them every year and keep going back to life as usual every February. Well, that
is not strange at all and there is nothing really wrong with you, well just a
little something wrong with you (smile). Ok, this is what I have discovered.
Everybody has a mental blueprint. If you are regular reader of my blog, you
will have come across what a mental blueprint is. It may be a financial
blueprint, a social blueprint or even a commitment blueprint. It is just a set
of entrenched reactions formed over time that becomes your default mode of
behavior anytime you encounter any issue relating to that area of life. It is
influenced by the reactions and actions of the people we saw and interacted
with whiles growing up. So if your
experience of life was parents and guardians and other relatives breaking their
promises all the time without any reason, your mind and subconscious comes to
believe that is the normal way life should be. So you grow up breaking promises
and disappointing people. Most of the time, it is neither deliberate nor even realized
by the individual. So he or she goes through life oblivious about whatever pain
he brings to people and friends and colleagues appear to him or her as too
selfish and accusatory. Most people have a failure to commit to goals
blueprint. The ability to consistently focus on a set of deliberately mapped
out action steps for specific length of time is alien to our mentality. Why?
Because we never saw anyone do it whiles we were growing up. All we saw was a
life that was lived on an impulse and ad hoc basis. So we may be inspired and
motivated to set resolutions and goals to accomplish, but our default mode of
ad hoc life kicks in and it is back to business as usual. Fortunately
blueprints can be reset and replaced by proper and better default modes.
The trick is to be persistent and consistent. It took time for any blueprint to set and
therefore it will take time to reset it. But that time can be kept short by a passionate
commitment to changing attitudes and mentalities. That is why it is always best
to write out your goals and resolutions on a piece of paper and paste it at a
place where you are bound to see and read it every day, morning and evening.
Your whole mind must be saturated by your goals. It should be your waking up
thought and the last thing you think about before you go to bed. It should be
in your bag and in your car. Repetition is truly the foundation of
learning.
Secondly, you should start with small, easy to achieve
goals. Just like how a child is taught to read, you should start small and
build momentum. The small victories will build up your self-esteem and send
signals to your brain to associate accomplishing goals with pleasure. But small
dreams should be followed up with bigger and bigger dreams till you achieve
mental maturity and a full reset. If you stop challenging yourself or spend too
much time setting small goals, you stand the chance of producing yet another
mediocre mental blueprint which is obviously counterproductive to what you seek
to accomplish.
Lastly you should be ready to get back up when you fail,
because you will. This may sound pessimistic, but it is truth. Your mental
blueprint was set years ago and therefore your mind will fight you all the way,
but never give up. Get right back to work as soon as you find yourself slacking
and you will be rewarded.
In conclusion, a mental blueprint is a default mode and just
like all default modes, it kicks in only when an experience triggers it. This
might make it hard to identify whatever blueprints you have, but an awareness
of your actions and reactions especially when they feel familiar and
comfortable should give you a clue. Reset all your default modes that are not
productive and enjoy a whole lot of a better life. Have fun. It is a good life.
Leave a comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment