Tweet

Derailing Your Train of Thought

Written by: Les Brown

Article Overview: However, contrary to a lot of people's belief, changes on the outside seldom create genuine change on the inside. That's why you can't buy your way to happiness, or eat your way, or pleasure your way, or even work your way there. Your midlife transition invites you to do the inside work first and, amazingly, the outside has a way of catching up with it.

Derailing Your Train of Thought

Have you ever noticed how certain patterns in your life keep re-emerging. Doesn't it sometimes feel as though you've gotten yourself locked into some kind of bizarre dance that sends you round and round the same issues and behaviors time after time? Only part of our actions are really deliberate; the rest are all learned behaviors. We learned them because we had to. At one time, they served us well. Although we can no longer even remember when we climbed on board these thought patterns, our behavior very often gives stark testimony to our rigid, one-track mind. There are many sayings and slogans in the many and varied recovery programs out there. There's one that fits here particularly well (it's from AA): "The same man will drink again." It's true because, unless we're able to confront the unconscious thought patterns that underlie our decision-making processes, when faced with similar situations, we'll just naturally come up with the same conclusions whether or not they make any sense. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity: 'Doing the same things over and over again, each time expecting different results?' The insanity behind self-defeating behavior doesn't lie in the will — we seem to have plenty of ability to do whatever we really want to do — the problem lies, rather, in our patterns of though themselves. Another saying from the world of recovery states: 'You don't have a drinking problem so much as a thinking problem.

A person in this condition — and who hasn't been in this condition at some time or other? — has only limited personal responsibility for his or her behavior. When your decision-making capacity has been hijacked by obsolete patterns of thinking and feeling, who's really in charge? Isn't it the 3-year-old who learned those ways of thinking and behaving in order to survive? We too often assume that our approach to the world and its challenges is somehow the 'obvious' way to behave when, in fact, it's actually doing damage to us, to our relationships and to our futures. Think about it: we don't know what we don't know (another dandy slogan, but one that's all too true). If you only knew why the same issues kept coming up over and over again and never seem to be getting any better, wouldn't you do something about it? I certainly would!

If, in fact, the responsibility we bear for our actions is limited by our knowledge and understanding of ourselves and our world, aren't we just amoral robots going about our pre-programmed patterns of stimulus and response? Wouldn't we be justified in claiming that our parents, our enemies, our cultures or the devil 'made me do it'? The answer, of course, is 'No.' The reason why we retain personal responsibility for our actions lies in our obligation to seek out and to root out the causes of our habitual, dysfunctional behavior. If there's a 3-year-old at the controls of our train of thought, the adult in us has the responsibility of exercising parental authority. And, if, for whatever reason, we're not capable of playing unsupervised in our own heads, then we have the responsibility to seek adult supervision.

What am I talking about? If your behavior is repeatedly getting you results that aren't what you wanted, you have a responsibility to get help. Since you don't know what you don't know, you can't change it. If you can't change your thought patterns, you won't change your behavior, and, since you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. At midlife, you have a responsibility to yourself to seek others wiser and more experienced than you to help you navigate the minefields of your own mind. In fact, as someone who seeks to establish him- or herself as a mature individual, you need people outside yourself to assist you to derail your train of thought, so you can stop the train of events that follow upon them. It's that train of events that we call a 'midlife crisis' and it's wholly optional, depending on whether or not you're willing to allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I made that choice out of necessity when I was 38 and my life was headed straight for a train wreck. That was a lot of years ago. Getting the assistance of a professional was a life-altering experience . . . one that set me up for a high-quality maturity, and one for which I shall be eternally grateful. I just did it again in a 5-day 'brush-up' session. I wanted to go even deeper into 'moldy oldie' hidden patterns of belief and thought that have long-since ceased to serve me well. The miracle is that, as soon as I see those things and how they're affecting me, the "Aha!" response gets set off and I just simply . . . change . . . my . . . mind. At that instant, I see things differently, the sky clears, and the sun starts shining into those too-long-dark nooks and crannies of my heart. Of course, it hurts while you're doing it (so does ripping off a band aid) but, when you come out the other side, there's a sense of liberation like nothing else.

When I returned from this program at the end of last week, people came up to me and said things like, "What happened to you?" and "You look different!" Evidently change on the inside creates huge changes on the outside. However, contrary to a lot of people's belief, changes on the outside seldom create genuine change on the inside. That's why you can't buy your way to happiness, or eat your way, or pleasure your way, or even work your way there. Your midlife transition invites you to do the inside work first and, amazingly, the outside has a way of catching up with it. Tired of getting the same old same old? Then maybe it's time to derail the train of thought in your one-track mind and consider, just for now, that nothing in your world may be at all what it seems!

Related Articles
  Is This The Best Work-Life Balance Book Ever Written?
  Mexican Train Should be an Olympic Event in Marketing
  Salesperson Wimp-Out: Cutting the Price
  The Art of Being with Fear: Never Be Stopped By Fear Again
  Downloadable Soft Skills Train the Trainer Training Materials Streamlines Training

Article Tags: aa, conclusions, definition of insanity, einstein, learned behaviors, mdash, one track mind, personal responsibility, sayings, self defeating behavior, slogans, testimony, thought patterns, unconscious



Related Forum Posts
Re: Feedback on a New Company Name - [quote="litekepr":1krjv27f]Not talking about a domain name. The sites I use to promote the tour business are already established. The idea is to have a name which includes what I do with that division of my business - it needs to be more personalized and professional instead just saying I'm Nikki and I coordinate tours. The SEO stuff is being taken care of on sites and blogs and other avenues. Anyway, I'm getting a lot of great feedback about the name and the search engines bringing up new posts and many older posts by me and about me that all point to my sites. Interesting perk I hadn't thought about. Shri[/quote:1krjv27f] Hi Shri, While I kind of see where you're coming from... but if the name is too long or descriptive, chances are it won't be very catchy or easy to remember. For instance, there's a company in Toronto called "BizLaunch" and their tagline used to be "We Train Entrepreneurs" (so that people would immediately understand what their business and website does). I think they've now changed their tagline to "Where entrepreneurs start", but the point is that "BizLaunch" sounds a million times better than if they had named their business "We Train Entrepreneuers". I think with some work, you could easily brand the name of your business (whatever you end up choosing) with the nature of its activities.
Hi from OpenAFranchise - Hello everyone, I am a small business owner working in a consulting capacity. Thought I would introduce myself. Nice to be here.
Re-introduction - Hello, Some of you know me and some of you don't. I've been gone for about 2 months, had some pretty serious health issues pop up.. but i'm stubborn so here i am back again. Thought i'd do a re-introduction. I'm Jen. I own/run my own graphic design firm. I also do business coaching on the side. How's everyone? Good too see that this forum has been growing while i've been away. Missed you all! Hope you'll all forgive me for being away.
Signatures can improve your Traffic - Don't forget that in addition to directories that you can post your business URL and details on that you can also utilize signatures in highly trafficed Forums - like this one. Except make sure that your Signature is keyword dense instead of your company's name and that the entire phrase is URL'd to your site. Thought I'd mention this one even though it may be obvious as we were talking about Traffic as well.
Re: Hi from OpenAFranchise - [quote="openafranchise":87whfsqv]Hello everyone, I am a small business owner working in a consulting capacity. Thought I would introduce myself. Nice to be here.[/quote:87whfsqv] Hello openfranchise, You are most welcome. this is a forum that will show you way to do good business and how to grow a good business. You can always find the right information at this forum. cheers!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Starting A Set of Books

What is Give Back Marketing?

Adapting to Technology and the Internet

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.