Cycle Breaking Before Change Making

Have you ever noticed yourself repeating patterns? Time and again encountering similar challenges? Or, no matter how hard you focus on certain areas, results are about the same? The people change, details shift and circumstances are different – but at the core – it feels oh so similar? Me too. What’s required is to do some cycle breaking before you can do any real change making. 

These cycles we can become entrapped in, personally and professionally, are because there are invisible forces of our unconscious mind shaping our views, choices and habits. Our unconscious is a great reservoir of automatic processes, hidden beliefs and past experiences that influence our decisions and behaviors without our conscious awareness. Even though it seems we’re consciously in control – our unconscious is essentially creating everything that we see and driving all of our actions. We’re all out here consciously playing checkers with a blindfold on while our brains are playing chess. 

Research out of the 1980s by Benjamin Libet revealed that the brain's motor cortex is activated before a person becomes consciously aware of their decision to move. So our unconscious brain goes through processes that precede a conscious decision to act. There are different takes on this, but to me, that clearly shows that our unconscious is guiding our behavior.

Carl Jung’s words ring true: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” 

If you want to break the cycle, it requires reflection before action.

This is the real work.

The breakthrough work.

The hardest work there is to do, in fact, and simultaneously the most impactful. Of course we need to launch the products, send the emails, communicate with those around us, but without truly reflecting and attempting to understand what’s driving you – you’re condemned to repeating the same old patterns with the same old results. 

We can take steps to break unconscious cycles by bringing our unconscious thoughts into conscious understanding – to first be more self aware, and then be able to shift them. It’s a practice of self-reflection, journaling or mindfulness about some of those unconscious drivers. A practice of seeking feedback from others that might be able to see some of our unconscious biases or patterns better than we can ourselves. And a practice of experimenting with changing some behaviors to disrupt patterns making them a little more visible. 

If you want to spend some time talking about this with me 1:1, I just joined Intro and you can book some time with me there. We can get into anything you’d like. But relative to this, we can get into how to identify patterns in more detail, hone in on the source of them and get a brief plan in place to shift them. 

I’m all for new goals, resolutions and results orientation. Especially as we’re getting into the time of year for that around the world. But it’s worth taking time, even before you think about goals, to start to inquire about what unconscious views, processes and behaviors may be holding you back. If you want to create real, sustainable and fulfilling results: cycle break before you change make. 

Key idea: Transformative results are driven by reflection before action 

Takeaway: Cycle break before you change make