When can the path of most resistance create the most sustainable change in our lives?
Our brains evolved for self-preservation - to survive. For our oldest ancestors, survival meant avoiding physical danger and death. In current times, the complexity of fears and threats in our environments, attachments to others and generational histories influence our brains perception of threats, its responses and its development. We build neural pathways from childhood - patterns of how we respond in stressful and threatening situations. And, we have to get curious about what these patterns are, why they served us then, how we benefited from them and what fears they softened. Then, we get even more curious about how we have reinforced and safeguard these patterns into adulthood.
As adults, there comes a time where our childhood strategies and patterns begin to threaten or sabotage the adult life we want to live. We want something different. Willpower alone cannot overpower these pathways. We need NOVELTY to disrupt the established habits, patterns and beliefs that stem from these once successful survival strategies.
The first catch to changing our brain or creating new pathways is that our brain is extremely RESISTANT to a new way of doing something. It favors the familiar, established paths, no matter how harmful or inefficient they may be - especially if it’s been done a particular way since childhood. So we actually have to choose to DISRUPT the old familiar patterns to help our brain grow. At first this can even be fun, maybe feel a little naughty, but when the old ingrained pathways are consistently threatened your mind rebels in resistance and your nervous system activates. Your safety alarm bells go off. Your brain perceives threat to this pattern, habit, or belief - as threat to your survival.
The second catch is your brain is using past fear, stress and threat to make something in the present moment dangerous that may NOT actually be dangerous. Your brain wants to protect its strong neural pathway carved from childhood more than recognize the nuance of what you may need most as an adult in the present moment.
How do we recognize if resistance is a real warning or your brain is favoring an outdated pattern? Ask yourself some questions…
Are you out of harms way physically and emotionally in this moment?
Is there an action you need to take or can take right now to address the urgency your mind is creating?
Is the way you feel right now familiar in some way? Does it resemble a response you had in your childhood?
Are you finding yourself saying tells like “I can’t” or “I’ve always…” or “I never…” or “it’s too much/too hard”?
If you are safe, there are no immediate actions to be taken and this feels somehow familiar - this is where RESISTANCE TRAINING comes in. Similar to teaching your joints to become more mobile or your muscles to get stronger, you get the best results if you are disciplined and you stretch the edge of their capacity bit by bit. If you go too far, you will injure yourself or skip the area that actually needs attention for more mobility or flexibility. For our brains, to build a new neural pathway, you need to stretch your brain out of its comfort zone, intentionally activating and then soothing your nervous system with new habits and beliefs.
For example, maybe you learned to hide, smother your voice, get small or please adults as a child to feel safe, loved, supported or maybe even get your basic needs met. This becomes essential for survival to your brain. Disruptions to these survival strategies could look like…becoming a disrupter by using your voice and speaking out. Naming the elephant in the room or having the 10 minute hard, sweaty conversation instead of avoiding conflict. Trying out being “naughty” as opposed to the “good” kid. Including your needs instead of only meeting the needs of others. Learning and sharing your needs, wants and desires. Feeling your feelings instead of adapting to the feelings or needs of others. Receiving as much as you give. Reparenting your younger self by becoming the supportive adult you needed as a child. Challenging old ways of being can be scary to our system…so we can expect resistance. If your nervous system leaps into fight, flight or freeze response, regulate the flooding first and then return to resistance training.
Repetition is key. Once you have disrupted an old pattern you have to keep disrupting it. This is where discipline comes in. Your brain is going to come up with every reason and emotional response to return to the old, familiar, childhood pathway. It’s the equivalent of a paved highway in your brain. Where as the new pathway is like a dirt path in the woods that you have to keep walking over and over again for it to truly establish itself. When you are doing something new the resistance or discomfort is actually telling you that your pathway is becoming more defined. But, this is when we often give up. Things feel too hard. Or we don’t even recognize we are being lulled back onto the paved highway.
Resistance is actually the sign you are successfully creating a more established new pathway, a new possibility. Keep choosing the path of most resistance, until it becomes another way!