Change

Change in itself means, then...
that we have to abandon our old self
It means that we have to
leave behind our identity...
and begin to speculate
who we could be.
To change means modifying
our behavior enough...
so that it's permanent.
So if somebody is
characteristically responding...
in the same way
over and over again...
and want-- that person wants to change
the way that they're responding...
it requires...
looking at the problem
on several different levels.
Sometimes it requires understanding
that emotional pattern...
and connecting the parts
of the nervous system...
that are about emotional survival
and cognitive appraisal...
and working through
the emotional "stuckness."
That's why, I suppose, there's
so many different types of therapies.
There's therapies that are geared
more at looking at emotions...
more at looking at cognitions...
more looking at behavioral ways...
you can help yourself
to get out of a pattern.
But I think, again,
looking at the human organism...
as every living system,
as a integrated whole--
that if there are ways
of integrating...
cognition, emotion,
behavior, physiology...
in your approach to change...
then that's what's ultimately
going to be most helpful.
And there are a variety of techniques
that can help a person to do that.
See, I think what you
want here is an answer:
I think there's a process-- that somebody
who's in that kind of a pattern...
there's a process of things that
that person has to go through...
before they can really do that
in a consistent way repeatedly...
so that actually they've
relearned a new way of behaving.
There's a human propensity for the mind
to consistently move back to the past.
That's a natural mechanism
that's been developed over eons.
When we have a new experience,
whatever that experience is...
that experience allows circuits and
connections in the brain to begin to formulate.
As those connections formulate,
they release chemicals...
and those chemicals make a feeling.
So emotions and feelings
are the end product of every experience.
And feelings and emotions help us
to remember experiences better.
We know where we were on 9/1 1 because
there was a feeling that was associated with it.
Now, what typically happens for most people
when they have a novel or a new experience...
they repeat that experience
over in their mind again.
It's a natural propensity.
And the reason we do that is because if we
can fire those circuits over and over again...
by the act of repetition
we can remember them
So we learn from an experience.
Learning is making new connections.
Remembering is maintaining
those connections.
So there's a natural order
in which we review something...
in order to remember it.
Now, the problem is
with most people...
is that they become
so immersed in the feelings...
of certain experiences...
is that feelings become
the means of thinking.
In other words, feelings
determine their thinking.
When that happens, we only
are living from the past...
because, by definition, feelings
are associated to some past event.
So if we determine our future
based on the feeling...
what we're really saying is...
"I'm trying to create a future situation
from a past situation"...
and invariably we will always continuously
re-create the future based on the past.
And that future
will be more of the past.
So what will we see?
People who are wired in victimization...
people who are wired in suffering...
people who are wired
in their insecurity.
And the feelings become
the barometer of their reality.
Then in their future experience...
they could only create reality
based on how they're wired.
They'll re-create the victimization in their
life, because it's all that they know.
In order to create a new future...
we have to leave the feelings
of the past behind.
We have to abandon the way
in which feeling is the means of thinking.
And when we're able to do that...
we're breaking the association...
and the neurological networks that are attached
to that thinking and feeling mechanism...
so that we're focusing
on an abstraction...
an idea, a concept, a dream...
that we haven't yet experienced,
because it has no emotion.
But it's something that
we would like to experience.
And that process
of being able to abandon...
the means of feeling
for a future potential...
is the greatest test
for the human being.