Step 5 - Change Your Behaviors & Change Your Mind!

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." --- Marcel Proust

Now that you've had a chance to "Catch Yourself In the Act" you can begin to take a step back and see that the disconnects between your good intentions and the behavioral results of those intentions don't always match. Being able to do this is a HUGE step for now you are in a position to create a new set of behaviors AND change your thinking, attitudes, and expectations about what typically takes place in different situations and interactions with others. Now that you know that the patterns of behaviors between yourself and your teen or spouse have led to a particular set of perceptions and beliefs about their intentions and that they have developed their own about you, the opportunity arises to create new patterns that lead to new, more satisfying, and hopefully more productive outcomes.

This may take some work. For example understanding Emotional Intelligence and how our emotions can sometimes hijack us and lead to unintended behaviors you can learn to pull the switch on your emotions before the hijacking so that you remain present, clear, and relatively calm during your interactions. Learning and practicing to meditate or use relaxation techniques can help you to see how our thought patterns can create scenarios based on our past learning and experiences that are influencing our behaviors today. Learning to use Non-Violent Communication techniques you can learn how to be less blaming and accusatory and talk more about your feelings and personal needs in a way that doesn't press the other persons buttons. You can practice all you learn with people that don't trigger you as much to get better at your skills. These are just a few examples of how you can learn, practice, and implement new behaviors that lead to different outcomes, attitudes and perceptions.

Coaching is especially helpful here as you need someone to support and encourage you through these changes and someone that can model the skills that you would like to learn. It is hard in the heat of the moment to remember what you have learned and practiced so having someone to brainstorm and problem solve with is important. Learning new behaviors takes practice and like any other skill takes repetition, support, and encouragement.

Remember, it is all how you look at it! Like the story of the blind men who, all standing at different parts of an elephant, try to describe it, and cannot. They can only describe their experience from the part of the elephant that they are touching. Put all the perceptions together and you have an elephant! When we're interacting with others in our lives we only have our perceptions with which to judge what the situations that we find ourselves in really mean. Stepping back, understanding the need for more information, opening ourselves to new images of the other, and trying out new behaviors we can literally change our behaviors and then our minds.

Spend some time today reflecting on your interactions with people close to you. Think about what thoughts or ideas you have about those persons and how they might influence how you interact with them. Imagine how you might, despite your expectations, try on a new behavior and see what happens as a result.