DISMANTLE THE MEMORY OF THE OLD YOU
(Week Three)
Once again, you will read through and perform your writing on Steps 5 and 6 before you do your Week Three meditation sessions.
STEP 5: OBSERVING AND REMINDING
In this step, you observe the old self and remind yourself who you no longer want to be.
Just like our working definition of meditation in Part II of the book, to observe and remember is to become familiar with; to cultivate the “self”; and to make known what is, in some way, unknown. Here you will become completely conscious of (by observing) the specific unconscious or habitual thoughts and actions that make up that state of mind and body that you named earlier, in Step 2: Recognizing. Then you will remind yourself about (by remembering) all of the aspects of the old self that you no longer want to be. You will become familiar with yourself “being” the old personality—the precise thoughts you no longer want to give power to, and the exact behaviors you no longer want to engage in—so you never fall back into being the old self. This frees you from the past.
What you mentally rehearse and what you physically demonstrate is who you are on a neurological level. The “neurological you” is made up of the combination of your thinking and actions on a moment-to-moment basis.
This step is designed to create greater awareness and a better observation of who you have been (metacognition). As you reflect and review your old self, you will get clear on who you no longer want to be.
Observing: Become Conscious of Your
Habitual States of Mind
In Step 2: Recognizing, you have already observed the emotion that drives you. Now I want you to become so familiar with your specific thoughts and actions derived from the old sensations that you can catch yourself while you live your life. With repeated practice, you can become so aware of the old patterns that you never allow them to manifest to fruition. The end result is that you stay ahead of the old self so that you have control over it. So when you start to notice the beginnings of the feeling that normally drives your unconscious thoughts and habits unfolding in your day, it has become so familiar to you that the slightest inkling is now brought to your awareness.
As an example, if you are overcoming a dependency on some substance such as sugar or tobacco, the more you are able to sense when the pangs and tugs of the body’s chemical addiction begin, the sooner you will be able to do battle against them. Everyone knows when the cravings start to occur. You begin to notice impulses, urges, and sometimes loud screams, which sound like, “Just do it! Submit! Give in! Go ahead—just this one time!” As you continuously forge onward and upward, in time you can notice when these cravings come up, and you will be better equipped to handle them.
The same is true with personal change, except the substance is not something that exists outside of you. In reality, it is you. Your feelings and thoughts are actually a part of you. Nevertheless, your real objective here is to be so aware of the self-limiting state of being that you would never let one thought or behavior go unnoticed by you.
Almost all of what we demonstrate starts with a thought. But just because you have a thought doesn’t necessarily mean it is true. Most thoughts are just old circuits in your brain that have become hardwired by your repetitive volition. Thus, you have to ask yourself, “Is this thought true, or is it just what I think and believe while I am feeling this way? If I act on this impulse, will it lead me to the same result in my life?” The truth is, these are echoes from your past that are connected to strong feelings, which activate old circuits in your brain and cause you to react in predictable ways.
Opportunity to Write
What automatic thoughts do you think when you feel that emotion you identified in Step 2? It is important to write them down and memorize the list. To help you recognize your own unique set of self-limiting thoughts, you may find the following examples helpful.
Examples of limiting automatic thoughts
(your daily, unconscious mental rehearsal):
Just as with habitual thoughts, habitual actions also make up your own unique undesirable states of mind. You are influenced to behave in memorized ways by the very emotion that has conditioned your body to be your mind. This is who you are when you go unconscious. You start off with good intentions, and then you find yourself sitting on the couch eating potato chips with the remote control in one hand and a cigarette in the other. However, just a few hours before, you proclaimed that you were going to get in shape and stop all self-destructive behaviors.
Most unconscious actions are taken to emotionally reinforce the personality and fulfill an addiction, in order to feel more of the same way. For example, people who feel guilty on a daily basis will have to perform certain actions to fulfill their emotional destiny. Most certainly, they will get in trouble in life to feel more guilt. Many unconscious actions match and thus satisfy who we are emotionally.
On the other hand, many people exhibit certain habits in order to temporarily make the feeling they have memorized go away. They look for instant gratification from something outside of them to momentarily free them from their pain and emptiness. Being addicted to computer games, drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, or shopping is used to resolve one’s inner pain and emptiness.
Your addictions create your habits. Since nothing that exists outside of you could ever resolve your emptiness on a permanent basis, invariably you will have to do more of the same activity over again. After the thrill or the rush wears off a few hours later, you will have to return to the same addictive tendency once more, but do it longer. However, when you unmemorize the negative emotion of your personality, you eliminate the destructive unconscious behavior.
Opportunity to Write
Think about the unwanted emotion you identified. How do you habitually act when you are feeling this way? You may recognize your own patterns among the examples below, but be sure to add those behaviors that are specific to you. Now, write down the unique ways you behave when you feel that emotion.
Examples of limiting actions/behaviors
(your daily, unconscious physical rehearsal):
If you are having difficulty coming up with answers, ask yourself what you think about during various situations in your life, and inwardly “watch” how you think and respond. You can also inwardly “look through the eyes” of other people. How would they say they see you? How do you act?
Reminding: Recall the Aspects of the Old Self
You No Longer Want to Be
Now review and memorize your list. This is an essential part of meditation. Your goal is “to become familiar with” how you think and act when this specific emotion is driving you. It is to remind you how you no longer want to be, and how you were making yourself so unhappy. This step helps you become aware of how you unconsciously behave and what you say to yourself while you’re thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking, so that you have more conscious control in your waking day.
Executing this step is a work in progress. In other words, if you sit down every day for a week to focus on this, you will probably find that you continue to modify and refine your list. That’s good.
When you do this step, you enter the operating system of the “computer” programs in the subconscious mind and throw the spotlight on them for your review. You ultimately want to become so familiar with these cognitions that you inhibit them from firing in the first place. You will prune away the synaptic connections that made up the old self. And if everywhere that a neurological connection is formed constitutes a memory, then you are in fact dismantling the memory of the old you.
Throughout this next week, continue to review the list again so that you know even better who you no longer want to be. If you can memorize all these aspects of the old self, you will separate your consciousness even further from the old self. When your habitual, automatic thoughts and reactions are completely familiar to you, they will never slip by unnoticed or unrecognized. And you will be able to anticipate them before they are initiated. This is when you are free.
In this step, remember: awareness is your goal.
You know the drill by now … read Step 6 and do your writing; then you’ll be ready to start your Week Three meditations.
Here’s what happens when you use the tools of redirecting: You prevent yourself from behaving unconsciously. You stop yourself from activating your old programs, and you biologically change, causing unfiring and unwiring of nerve cells. Similarly, you stop the same genes from being signaled in the same ways.
If you’ve struggled with the idea of surrendering control, this step allows you to more consciously and judiciously take back the reins in order to break the habit of being yourself. When you become masterful at being able to redirect yourself, you’re building a solid foundation on which to create your new-and-improved self.
Redirecting: Play the Change Game
During your meditations this week, take some of the situations you came up with in the step just before, and as you picture them or observe yourself in your mind, tell yourself (out loud), “Change!” It’s simple:
The Loudest Voice in Your Head
After you remind yourself to stay conscious throughout your day, as you learned in the previous step, you can now use a tool to change right in the moment. Whenever you catch yourself in real life thinking a limiting thought or engaging in a limiting behavior, just say “Change!” out loud. Over time, your own voice will become the new voice in your head—and the loudest one. It will become the voice of redirection.
As you repeatedly interrupt the old program, your efforts will begin to further weaken the connections between those neural networks that make up your personality. By the principle of Hebbian learning, you will unhook the circuits connected to the old self during your daily life. At the same time, you are no longer epigenetically signaling the same genes in the same ways. This is another step so that you will become more conscious. It is developing “conscious control” of yourself.
When you can stop a knee-jerk emotional reaction to some thing or person in your life, you are choosing to save yourself from returning to the old you that thinks and acts in such limited ways. By the same idea, as you gain conscious control over your thoughts that may be initiated from some stray memory or association connected with some environmental cue, you will move away from the predictable destiny in which you think the same thoughts and perform the same actions, which will create the same reality. It is a reminder placed by you in your own mind.
As you become aware, redirect your familiar thoughts and feelings, and recognize your unconscious states of being, you are also no longer using up your valuable energy. When you are living in a state of survival, you are signaling your body into emergency status by knocking it out of homeostasis and thus mobilizing a lot of energy. Those emotions and thoughts represent a low frequency of energy that is consumed by the body. So when you are conscious and change them before they make it to the body, then every time you notice or redirect them, you are conserving vital energy you may use for creating a new life.
Associative Memories Trigger Automatic Responses
Since staying conscious is crucial to creating that new life, it is important to understand how associative memories have made it so difficult for you to stay conscious in the past, and how practicing redirection can help free you from your old self.
Earlier in this book, we saw that Pavlov’s classical-conditioning experiment with dogs beautifully illustrates why it can be so hard for us to change. The dogs’ reaction in that experiment—learning to salivate in response to a bell—is an example of a conditioned response based on an associative memory.
Your associative memories exist in the subconscious mind. They are formed over time when the repeated exposure to an external condition produces an automatic internal response in the body, which then elicits an automatic behavior. As one or two of the senses respond to the same cue, the body reacts without much of the conscious mind’s involvement. It turns on by a thought or a memory alone.
By the same token, we live by numerous similar associative memories in our lives, triggered by so many known identifications derived from our environment. For instance, if you see someone you know well, chances are that you are going to respond in automatic ways without ever consciously knowing it. Seeing that individual will create an associated memory from some past experience that is connected to some emotion, which then triggers an automatic behavior. The chemistry of your body changes the moment you “think” about him or her in the past memory. A program runs from the repeated conditioning that you memorized about that person into your subconscious mind. And just like Pavlov’s dogs, in moments you are physiologically responding unconsciously. Your body takes over and begins to run you subconsciously, based on some past memory.
Your body is now predominantly in control. You’re out of the driver’s seat consciously because your subconscious body-mind is now controlling you. What are the cues that cause this to occur so quickly with you? They can be anything or everything in your external world. Their source is your relationship to your known environment; it is your life, which is connected to all of the people and things you experienced at different times and places.
This is why it is so difficult to stay conscious in the process of change. You see a person, hear a song, visit a place, remember an experience, and your body begins to immediately “turn on” from a past memory. And your associated thought about how to identify with someone or something activates a cascade of reactions below the conscious mind that then returns you back to the same personality self. You think, act, and feel in predictable, automatic, memorized ways. You subconsciously reidentify with your past known environment, which then returns you to your known self living in the past.
When Pavlov continued to ring the bell without the reward of food being present, in time the dogs’ automatic response lessened because they no longer maintained the same association. We could say that the dogs’ repeated exposure to the bell without the food dwindled their neuroemotional response. They stopped salivating because the bell became a sound without any associative memory.
Catch Yourself Before “Going Unconscious”
As you run through a series of situations in your mind’s eye in which you stop yourself from being the old self (emotionally), your repeated exposure to the same stimuli (mentally) will, over time, weaken your emotional response to that condition. And as you consistently present yourself to the same motives of the old identity and notice how you automatically responded, you will become conscious enough in your life that you catch yourself from going unconscious. In time, all of those associations that turned on the old program will become just like the dogs’ experience of the bell without the food—you no longer knee-jerk back physiologically to the neurochemical you, connected to familiar people or things.
Thus, your thought about a person who makes you angry or your interaction with the ex-boyfriend can no longer tug on you because you’ve mindfully stopped yourself enough times. As you break the addiction to the emotion, there can be no autonomic response. It is your conscious awareness in this step that then frees you from the associated emotion or thought process in your daily life. Most of the time, these reflexive reactions go by unchecked by you because you are too busy “being” the old you.
It is important that you rationalize beyond the barometer of your feelings to understand that these survival emotions are affecting your cells in adverse ways by pushing the same genetic buttons and breaking down your body. It raises the question: “Is this feeling, behavior, or attitude loving to myself?”
After I say “Change,” I like to say, “This is not loving to me! The rewards of being healthy, happy, and free are so much more important than being stuck in the same self-destructive pattern. I don’t want to emotionally signal the same genes in the same way and affect my body so adversely. Nothing is worth it.”
WEEK THREE
GUIDE TO MEDITATION
During your Week Three meditations, your aim is to now add Step 5: Observing and Reminding, then Step 6: Redirecting, to the previous steps, so that you are doing all six. Steps 5 and 6 will ultimately merge to become one step. Throughout your day, as limiting thoughts and feelings come up, observe yourself and automatically say “Change!” out loud; or hear this—instead of the old voice(s)—as the loudest voice in your head. When that happens, you will be ready for the creation process.
