{CELEBRATE PROGRESS)// In our conscious brain and unconscious brain, we have “blueprints”- templates detailing everything from what a “healthy” relationship looks like, to how a conflict goes down, to how you handle stress and overwhelm, plus every big and minor thing in between. These templates were created by observing life outside of us, what was modeled for us, and through our lived experience. They guide us through our lives, prompting us about how to respond, how to relate, what’s “normal” and familiar, How We Do A Thing.
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Since our brains love to create shortcuts to save us time and energy, templates are handy so that we’re not approaching every situation from a position of “new and novel”- that would be overstimulating and energetically exhaustive. The problem is that we sometimes outgrow templates, or the templates we’ve been using all this time don’t serving us anymore. Then, we need new templates.
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When we’re trying to set in motion a new habit, pattern, way of being, relating, thinking or moving through the world (in other words, trying to create new blueprints), it’s natural to put a lot of pressure on ourselves: we want it to happen fast, and we don’t want to revert back to whatever it is we’re trying to evolve. But here’s the thing: we have to build up the neural connections and the internal “muscle” memory, first, and this happens gradually. We don’t expect crawling infants to go straight from crawling to running across the room, do we? No, we applaud every bit of the process- the pull-to-stand, the first clumsy step, even the falls. It’s progress!
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For every bit of time we spend trying out our new blueprints, however fleeting those moments may be, we’re showing our nervous systems, “this is how I’d like you to act…to feel…”. That means your nervous system will more readily recognize this space when you try it out again- it won’t register as so strange, scary and unfamiliar. You’ll eventually be able to spend more time in this new place, building muscle memory, until it just becomes the new normal…until you don’t remember a time when walking wasn’t a thing for you yet.
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What would shift for you if you applauded your progress?
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