Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Mental Simulation to Change Your Behavior, Part IV

Mental simulation consists in acting out your new behavior in situations where you would normally respond in destructive ways.

But you don’t start out in real life.

Begin inside your mind.

Imagine yourself being in a difficult situation. Then you imagine how you would like to respond in this kind of situation.

Don’t do it once or twice. Do it repeatedly for many days or weeks.

The purpose of this is to train your brain to associate your new good behavioral patterns with the tricky scenarios.

When you create new thinking patterns, your brain creates new neural connections. You will eventually behave in more desirable ways in difficult situations because of the new pathways you have created in your brain.

To be continued...

2 comments:

  1. Great article, Brit. Another great way to train the brain to switch focus at will is to visit the ice cream parlor.

    Go with the purpose of taking a good 5 minutes to choose which you want to have. As you look at each one, take the time to imagine how it tastes. The more clear the memory of the flavor, the more engaged your brain becomes.

    Plus, it is a hell of a lot easier to practice mind games with ice cream than it is about that comment he made last night, right?

    Love your work Brit...forge on!

    Love,
    Catherine

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  2. That's a great method, Catherine. I like it a lot. Thanks for stopping by!

    ReplyDelete