Are our Habits and Nervous System Connected?
Filed Under General, Mind Control, Positive Thinking, Success
Make Your Nervous System Your Ally
One of the most important things we can do in our self improvement training is to learn to make our nervous system our ally. We must be careful because it can be made into our enemy also. To make it our ally we must, as early as possible, make as many useful actions as we can automatic and habitual.
Whatever new habit we are trying to acquire we must never let an exception occur until the new habit is securely rooted in our life. When you start training yourself in this new habit you must launch yourself with as strong and decided initiative as possible.
Pass Proper Impulses to your Subconscious
In a sense we are passing on to our subconscious mind proper impulses so that they will become automatic and second nature to our subconscious mind. Our subconscious mind is great at storing all sorts of suggestions from ourselves and others. So we must be careful to send it proper materials from which it can make habits.
Get into the habit of doing certain things. Our subconscious mind will make it easier for us to do the same thing over and over again, making it easier each time, until it becomes automatic habit that we find difficult to free ourselves from.
Stop Bad Habits
We must also be very careful not to develop bad habits. You might feel that it is ok to do a certain thing today and there may be no harm in it but if you do it again the next day you may be setting yourself up a bad habit.
Another important factor when developing a new habit is to do it with as much as enthusiasm as possible. This way you will be able to gain the most ground before you have expend your energy and met with the friction of the opposing habit.
Just this Once
You must also be careful not to give into temptations to break the new habit by saying to yourself “just this once”. That is really the beginning of the end. If you give in to it just once then you have introduced a wedge that can split your resolution into pieces.
One example I like to use as a good way our nervous system can turn things into habit is learning to play the piano. I never learned to play any musical instruments when I was young, except six months of guitar lessons. At the age of 37 I decided to try to learn to play the piano.
I practiced for about a half hour to an hour every day just on my own from a book I had purchased at the bookstore. I realize that I am getting quite good at least with the basics, because of the training every day of my nervous system to do the same thing everyday.
I have found that if I try to play a song without having practiced it for a couple of months I can remember most of the song. This is because it has become part of my nervous system. It has remembered what to do and what keys to hit.
This is like any great athlete. When they are practicing their sport they do not have to think about what they are doing anymore because it has become automatic. This is they way you should make your good habit. Automatic!
