Are you deliberately behaving like that?!

Last year I conducted research in the patterns of behaviour we find ourselves most commonly trapped in. I conducted interviews with anyone who wanted to explore their own patterns. You may have been one of them, as the invitation went out in a previous #Silverlinings - if so thank you!!

Some people arrived to the interviews with a fully mapped out cycle of thought, feeing and behaviour, understanding the way they replayed the same pattern over time and circumstance. Others had only part of the cycle mapped and yet through discussion they could see the atomatic nature with which the patterns played out over their past and current situations.

Adulting in our complex world is hard and that is why we as humans develop patterns. We need automatic patterns that kick in with not much thought, and of course we choose patterns that have at least at some point worked well for us. Patterns are sensible and useful. Unless...unless they are neither sensible nor useful.

While of course we all have a strong desire is to feel 'more complicated', there is immense value in reducing our complexities to a repeated pattern. From a simplified, position we can separate ourselves from the tangled intricacies of feelings and thoughts and remind ourselves we are human and as such, biased in our thinking and habitual in our behaviour. We can say, 'oh, there's that pattern again!' and understand it as our short cut that at some point worked in our favour. Looking back at our pattern as no more than an automatic learnt system, can give us the distance to evaluate it. We can objectively start to evaluate whether the pattern is something that helps or hinders in this present moment.

The four key patterns that I identified that seem to hinder people or keep them in a level of discomfort are:

🙅Avoidance Loop

🕵️Absolutism Grip

🙏Approval Eclipse

🙎Armouring Clasp

Do you want to see if any of these patterns are running in you? Or perhaps you want to help others with their less helpful patterns or the more habitual running of them? I'll cover each of these patterns in my next few Silverlinings. And more usefully, I hope, I will share ways in which we can learn to #Depattern #Deliberately

fyi The Avoidance Loop came out today for people signed up to #Silverlinings....To sign up to Silverlinings click the link and feel free to forward! 😊