So, here we are nearly at the end of January already, where does the time go? Christmas is but a distant memory and as our thoughts now start to turn to our Summer holidays, how well are you're sticking to your New Year's Resolution? Probably not very well and I suspect that if you've taken on 3 or 4 changes most of them have fallen by the wayside already.
But don't despair - forget about those resolutions you've not stuck with for the time being, put them to the back of your mind and start to really concentrate on just the one you're still doing.
It can take up to 6 weeks of hard work in order to re-wire your brain into accepting these changes into becoming your new habit. You see a habit is like a well-worn path
through a large field. So, let’s say
this path takes you to marshland and that is not where you want to go any more. You would like to now go to the
berry bush in the corner of the field.
The only problem is that there is no path to the berry bush, and the
grass in the field is four feet high and hard to walk through.
Obviously, the thing you need to do is
to make a new path. It may be a little
difficult and will certainly be a lot harder than going down the well-worn
path. But, if you want to get to the
berry bush that is what you need to do.
Imagine you have walked to the berry
bush a couple of times creating a rough but visible pathway. Then you begin down the original path again
and you come to a fork where you see the well-worn path that leads to the
marshland and the less trodden path that leads to the berry bush.
What happens when you choose the berry
bush path every time you come to the fork?
It becomes easier and easier to walk down. And what happens to the other path? It grows over and becomes more and more difficult
to walk down. A new habit is forming and
at some point it will become effortless, automatic.
So, the good news is…..we all have the
ability to learn and change by re-wiring our brains. If you have ever changed a bad habit or
thought about something differently, you have created a new pathway in your
brain. With repetition and desire you
can rewire your brain!
