Rewire Your Brain for Change

Photo Cred: @dingzeyuli

Want Long-Lasting Real Change? Re-Wire Your Brain

If you’re like many people, you create plenty of goals and maybe even an action plan, but for one reason or another, you don’t end up doing the things that support those goals or your heart’s desire.

Why do you think that is?

One reason is that it can be comfortable energetically to hang on to past patterns and behavior. We receive benefits from staying in our old ways. Even though we have committed to a goal of not repeating a similar pattern, we tend to gravitate back to the comfort of what we know.

Have you ever created a goal and found that not only are you not moving toward your goal, you’re actually running from it? It can be challenging to change because the repetition of any behavior or pattern creates neural pathways in the brain making us creatures of habit.

The Desire To Change

I recently worked with a client who had been wanting to create new, healthy friendships that didn’t involve drinking and gossiping. She found that she felt very depressed and alone after being surrounded in their negativity. She was also becoming more critical of herself and others.

Before we worked together, she created an action plan with a goal to build the relationships that were nourishing to her. Her first week went alright. She was putting energy into connecting with people that were like minded. She even started going to a yoga class with one of her friends.

However, by the weekend, she found she was easily pulled back into old behavior and couldn’t resist the call to go out with her drinking buddies. When she came to me, she was experiencing bouts of depression, couldn’t focus and was very critical of herself for not following through on her action plan. She felt that she was on a hamster wheel of destructive behavior – from critical inner thinking to binge drinking – and felt hopeless to change.

This is a common theme. We set goals, slip up, revert to past behaviors, become discouraged, and are caught up in a cycle of self-sabotage. Our neural networks are wired to efficiently keep us rolling down the same pathway over and over, making us creatures of habit.

We Can Change Our Beliefs

The good news is that beliefs aren’t real. Beliefs are just thoughts that we’ve repeated over and over, but they’re not real. The reality is that we do not have to stay stuck in those programs, as there is a way to rewire your brain.

What we achieve can be limited by what we believe. Henry Ford knew this, saying

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right!”

Our thoughts are quite powerful and create beliefs. We ought to be continually working on creating positive ones!

Shaman’s believe that we have internal maps inside of our energetic field. Scientists refer to these as neural networks. We can heal the imprints of repetitive negative patterns of behavior, trauma and disease by working within our field to combust heavy, stagnant energy and rewire the brain.

Forming New, Positive Neural Networks

If we don’t work on the energetic level, we will continue to run down the same neural pathway highways of old, unhealed beliefs. Working with an energy medicine practitioner, you learn to let go of old beliefs and literally dream your world into being. You are able to let go of suffering and step into a world filled with healing and light. You lay down new, positive networks in your brain.

Limiting beliefs can keep you trapped in roles. As an Energy Medicine Practitioner my goal is to help people to access their own healing power. Click here to learn more about energy healing.

Over to you. How have your beliefs impacted your ability to keep your goals alive?

Want to take the first steps in understanding your blocking belief and creating a new story? Try these two exercises.

Writing Exercise:

We all of have unconscious programs that are running below the surface. These personal stories can keep you tied to beliefs that do not serve you. One of the ways we can release ourselves from the hold of our personal story is to identify the ones that are being repeated and that no longer serve you.

Write a one-page story about a man or a woman who is locked in a castle dungeon. How did the person come to be there? What are the beliefs or fears keeping him or her there? Let the words flow, and don’t worry about grammar or punctuation. Open and let yourself write freely.

Write a new story for yourself. One where you are free, creating your own destiny. Pay attention to the strengths and beliefs in your new story. Allow yourself to visualize this new way of being in the world, informed by these new beliefs.

Want to dive deeper? Contact Heidi for a healing session to release limiting beliefs, and work with our brain’s neuroplasticity to create new neural networks.

Another exercise:

Imagine that you are 90 years old, and you have lived a full life. You are sitting on your property overlooking your favorite view and pondering different areas of your life, such as friends and family, work and career, good times and bad, personal and spiritual development, creativity, health, self-expression, and service.

Keep imagining yourself looking back through your life.

• What gave you pleasure?

• What are you grateful for?

• Where in your life do you feel most abundant?

• What are your proud of?

• What has been important to you?

• What values are you most proud of?

• What do you feel peaceful about?

Looking back, what would you say to a younger version of yourself? Such as the age you are today.

Take a few moments to let all this sink in. Write down thoughts or reflections.