Whenever a client begins working with me, she is ready and excited to move forward. She’s ready to turn around the habits that have been holding her and her life down. This readiness to begin anew is usually accompanied with energy, enthusiasm, and also some impatience.
Taylor came to our session bubbling with excitement, and rushing to make plans for the upcoming week, as is typical.
I had some bad news to deliver to Taylor “We have 25+ years of socialization inside our minds, most of which actually is harmful to on-going motivation and behavior.” “So, before we build anything we have to excavate.”
In our culture, we’ve learned to take action and expect immediate results. Advertisements advice us to “Jump start your motivation!”, “Spring into swimsuit weather!”, “Drop 25 pounds in one week!”
This socialization has created our mental models and has taught us to rush into action, whenever we decide to change our behavior.
These mental models are a problem for the same reason they are beneficial. They help us accomplish things, automatically without much effort but without attention too.
These mental models promote instant gratification and may get some immediate results but they set us up to fail long term.
Stopping, in order to move forward, is counter-intuitive and isn’t even what we want. Yet it’s essential.
Here’s why. Imagine an architect building a house quickly, without much thought, on a foundation that isn’t stable. Would you want to purchase that house?
I didn’t think so.
But building a behavior, like regular movement and self-care, is based on similar principles.
Our mental models constitute the foundation for our behavior. If our mental models are based on faulty assumptions they will not support lasting behavior. While they seem like “fact” they are simply constructed out of our socialization and previous experiences. Only by being mindful of this reality, can we dismantle our mental models by excavating the deep beliefs that put us at war with our bodies and ourselves.
This opens up space to create new beliefs. Excavation, while ignored by most, is necessary to engineer self-nurturing habits of mind that will result in motivation and behavior that can stand the test of time.
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