Let’s say you want to change a specific behavior, like craving and caving to greasy-sweet-yummy-salty-fattening foods that delight your tastebuds but destroy your body. You’re tired of feeling tired, disgusted with the spare tire you’ve carried for too long now, and you’ve decided it’s time to make a change.
First, look at the thoughts that precede the recurring bad behavior. If every time you nose-dive into a plate of nachos, you may see that your thought pattern is something like, “Well, just this once. I deserve this right now. I’ve had a stressful day and this little indulgence is just what I need. I’ll start being good tomorrow.”
If those thoughts are all too common, that’s a sign there is a deeper belief supporting them. Dig down further and you may find a belief, supporting your poor me thoughts, that goes something like, “The only way I can survive tough times is to eat.” Even more excavation into beliefs might reveal that your parents helped create/reinforce this belief by giving you a treat every time something disappointing, sad, or stressful happened in your childhood.
Great… so now you know the thoughts and the belief that are causing the behavior. How do you change a belief?
You change your behavior – regardless of what thoughts and beliefs are fueling them. You’ve become conscious to your motivations and actions, and you choose change, right then and there.
Because the cycle of Belief – Thought – Behavior is a never-ending circle, you can break the loop anywhere and interrupt the cycle. Each step reinforces the next. So when you begin to change your thoughts or behaviors, regardless of what preceded them, you change what follows, reinforcing new beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors.
For instance, you skip the plate of nachos and opt for a walk instead. Your thoughts may still be saying, “But it was a hard day and you deserve the nachos!” and your belief might still be that you need food to survive stressful situations, but your behavior suddenly proves differently.
After you go on a walk, the endorphins are pumping, and lo and behold, you actually do feel better. You didn’t need the nachos. You proved your thoughts and belief wrong.
Because life isn’t a fairy tale, those sabotaging thoughts and beliefs don’t magically disappear in that moment. They will rear their ugly heads again. But you took the first step to slaying that dragon, weakening it just a bit by proving it wrong.
Your behavior chipped away at the belief that you can only survive tough situations with food. You proved it wrong, because without the food, you lived to see the next day. And because the belief begins to change, the thoughts begin to change too.
The next time nachos lustily whisper your name, rather than instantly rationalizing why you deserve them, you may have second thoughts. You will remember how you didn’t need them last time, and congruent with your slightly changing beliefs, it becomes that much easier to choose something that feeds your body well. You feel better and further chip away at the original belief.