Actions can change thoughts when we listen to our first language…behavior. We’ve talked about this concept before in Learn To Love Your Story. Behavior is a language and one that the body listens to constantly. Remember how we talked last week…about how divorced we are from our bodies? Well one of the drawbacks of this is that our thinking brains sometimes lose the ability to understand the language of behavior. Yet, our bodies never do. They are constantly attending to this native tongue of our being.
So one of our greatest assets is to harness the power of behavior patterns, because ultimately the body influences the mind to change its patterns of thinking when we change our patterns of behavior. We are able to shift perspectives, without focusing on our thinking at all. Instead we are focused on our actions. How we are showing up in our lives. Chew on that a second…without ever focusing on what you are thinking, or changing what you are thinking, or even replacing your thinking, YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR THINKING. I know right?!?
When it comes to changing our mindset around self-care, this is especially helpful. Remember those pesky social programs and conditioning that I have referred to before…well that can really get in the way of our changing our thinking about self-care. We are trying to shift to the perspective that self-care is a selfless act, rather than buying into the social programming that tells us that it is selfish. Implementing new behavior patterns becomes a great way to circumvent the thinking mind’s blocks with this old programming.
So how do we do this? It doesn’t take much effort really. We have to start by creating daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rewards for ourselves that we do with religiosity. That means little things you do for yourself daily, slightly bigger things (or things that take more time) weekly, things that need more coordination to pull off for ourselves monthly, and at least once a year doing something really special for ourselves.
Want to know the best part? You never have to earn these things and you give them to yourself anyway. Huh? Right about now you are thinking to yourself, Dr. Marr is not making sense. Why would I ever reward myself for doing nothing? Earning nothing? Moreover, why would I reward myself if I haven’t even finished the “To Do List” I have or met all the needs of those who depend on me? It doesn’t make sense.
My answer for you is simple…it makes sense when your mindset is “Selfish is the New Selfless”. If this is the mindset you are trying to shift to, a behavior pattern change like this can demonstrate this to your body. If every day you are non-contingently rewarding yourself, it will influence and eventually change your old mindset. It will start helping you to see that caring for the YOU that does all the selfless things is the most selfless act you do. Taking care of yourself first means that you have the energy, drive, and compassion to do the selfless things for others that you value so much.