by Christian Nor-Arevian
“It’s all in your mind.” How often have we all heard those words spoken in a critical fashion? Yet those five little words hold one of the greatest truths in life.
Have you ever wanted to achieve something such as a new job or promotion, loosing weight, finding the right partner or even starting your own business – but no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t achieve your goal or maintain consistent results?
Informational resources abound – television, magazines, books, motivational seminars, and of course the internet – all offering ready made quick fix solutions or guides on how to lose weight, achieve financial freedom, improve relationships, be happy, reduce stress and so on, all which contain a myriad of ideals that we think will make our personal and professional lives more successful or fulfilling. Generally, we may get motivated for a short period yet, within six months, or even less in most cases, we are back to our old ways, in despair and again in search of the next quick fix, motivational mind-opening course or bestselling book. Factors such as genetics, IQ (intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence), education and socio-demographics (where you grew up) all have a relational influence on how ‘successful’ you’ll be in life. Yet, regardless of all these factors there is a single prevailing factor that is continually overlooked and which often provides the missing link in achieving your goals – your beliefs.
As You Believe, So You Achieve
One of the most important things when it comes to delivering self sustainable and lasting results, is understanding what is at the core of what motivates and drives us. This is where our beliefs and values become so critical, together with having a specific strategy and plan to implement. Beliefs and values, just like our bodily functions such as breathing, blinking and digestion, are relatively unconscious to us. They operate as an inner authority or computer program in a hard drive which determines what‘s important to you, what you spend your energy and time on and what you think about mostly. Although beliefs are continually formed throughout our life, many of our core beliefs were formed during our childhood, when we aren’t consciously aware of the complexities in our environment, and we relied heavily on our parents and other authority figures for guidance and understanding of what was right or wrong, as well as what’s important in life. Due to a combination of social conditioning, limited life experience, availability of skills and resources in dealing with certain events and the nature of the human brain, we may have misinterpreted information and events from our past or unquestioningly taken on other’s perspectives – which may not be appropriate or empowering to us in later life. As a result, we developed certain views and beliefs on core themes and relationships in life, such as career, politics, marriage, health, wealth and education, these were often typically based on what our parents and other authority figures did or didn’t demonstrate. Beliefs and values also act like self-fulfilling prophecies, in that if you believe something is true or not, you will perceive and act according to what you believe. This is where problems often arise, and where long held beliefs can begin to work against our highest aspirations. Every time you act on a previous belief, it creates deep neural connections within our brain which essentially acts like wiring, telling the brain how to respond if presented with a similar situation in the future. As these neural pathways become more engrained our thinking and behaviour also become entrenched to the point that they become automatically triggered when similar events in the future occur.
For example, when dealing with conflict, an individual formed a belief due to previous experiences that it’s better to avoid conflict and therefore will continually steer clear of it, because they believe that conflict can create problems and disrupt or destabilise their environment, leading to dissent and criticism. In the short term, this belief may avoid the symptoms of conflict, although in the long term one runs the risk of escalating it, creating further breakdowns in relationships through disunity and distrust, that could be easily resolved through effective communication and negotiation strategies.
I recently worked with a partner of a law firm who was experiencing significant amounts of stress, due to work life balance challenges and being disengaged with his career. This led to low levels of enthusiasm, motivation and frustration as well as conflict at work and home. Plagued by constant indecision and self doubt, my client experienced an ongoing internal tug-of-war between what to do and fear of what could go wrong if he made the ‘wrong decision’. This impacted his performance and he began to feel physically and emotionally drained. Insights in neuroscience have demonstrated the reasons why we react to stressful situations are due to the activation of the amygdala which resides within the limbic system in the brain. When we’re confronted with a potential threat or stressor, the amygdala highjack’s the logical thinking centre of the brain called the frontal cortex, and assesses the intensity of the threat and determines whether we should stand and fight or flee the situation. In my client’s situation, he initially felt overwhelmed and wanted to resign, however after some discussion he was able to turn his circumstances around by accessing the areas of his brain responsible for problem solving and higher thinking. Rather than leave his job, he was able to identify what he wanted to achieve and subsequently developed a strategy that was beneficial to both the organisation and his needs. In computing, we don’t keep kicking the computer to change the results – we upgrade or create a new program so the computer does what we want it to and that which it is designed to do. Likewise, by accessing the regions of the brain that are responsible for higher thinking we can create new possibilities and solutions to our problems. Combined with new skills and tools, the more we act on our new patterns of thinking the more we establish new neural pathways that further support and reinforce our desired thinking and behaviour. What was once a roadblock to your success can provide the hidden key that, will unlock your potential and continually drive performance towards achieving your desired outcome.
Creating Meaningful and Sustainable Change
To ensure long term results, the following steps provide a guide to drive us towards solution focused thinking, while identifying the actions and resources needed to achieve your specific outcomes:
1. Determine what you want to achieve and become: State
specifically what you want in positive terms – not what you don’t
want. If we give vague or conflicting directions to someone such
as telling them to turn right when we wanted them to go left
they will end up some place else. Your brain is somewhat like a
computer in that it needs specific orders of what to do.
2. What are you doing that is working? Identify your key strengths
and the parts of your strategy that are working and keep doing
it. This will give you both confidence and a foundation to build
your new plan.
3. What am I doing that is not working? Our greatest lessons
and opportunities are often shrouded within setbacks. Use this
information as feedback that part of your strategy isn’t working.
Determine what you need to change and commit to changing it.
4. Create a plan. List the specific actions that need to be
taken, including learning new skills, acquiring resources and
developing relationships that support your outcomes, together
with where and when you will do it, and how you will measure
the progress of your actions.
5. Take Action. Often we procrastinate and hesitate to create
change because we wait for the environment to change or
we wait to feel motivated prior to taking action. Feelings of
motivation and inspiration, happiness and fulfilment often arise
only after we act on the things we want to achieve.
6. Test and measure. Continue to assess the effectiveness of your
strategy and make the necessary adjustments and refinements
along the way.
Through advances in neuroscience we can now combine
effective and reliable strategies that enable us to overcome the
brain’s reactions to significant stress and begin to access greater
possibilities and solutions to both our personal and professional
challenges as, well as capitalising and creating new opportunities.
“The lesson here”, as Dr John Ratey clinical professor of
psychiatry at Harvard University states in his book ‘A Users Guide
to the Brain’, “is that we have the power to change our brains” -
and our lives.
Christian Nor-Arevian is a performance and executive coach who specialises in coaching executives on performance and leadership development, effective communication, stress management and work life balance. Using a researched base awareness of neurobiological basis of human behaviour, development and positive psychology, Christian has worked with clients such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Telstra, Energy Australia and McGrath Real Estate to achieve lasting and sustainable results to create environments that enhance fulfilment and performance.
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