Transforming our Habits and Behavior - Grand Master Julie Scott: transcript

today we're going to explore how we can transform habits thoughts emotions and behaviors that are no longer useful to us into thoughts habits and behaviors that empower us in the second temple degree the monographs define a habit it states a habit by definition corresponds to a physical or mental behavior that we repeat often without being aware of it so i'll say that again a habit by definition corresponds to a physical or mental behavior that we repeat often without being aware of it from a mystical point of view it originates in the voluntary repetition of an act whose execution becomes a law for the subconscious

so we don't even realize that we have created a habit but our subconscious mind embraces it as a law as a command to be carried out when we begin a habit we consciously order our subconscious to do something to satisfy a desire for example let's say many years ago we came home from work we were really tired we may have felt overwhelmed and we want some relief so that day we self-medicated with food or we chose to do something that numbs our mind because we were just overwhelmed that day we needed some relief from the intensity of that busy day and i'm sure you can think of other things other examples that help to create a

habit so this started one day we didn't always watch television every night or we didn't always overeat if that's a challenge for us but it started in order to provide some kind of relief for us and it can also start to start by um uh well let's just stay with that so it can it can provide a relief for us then through repetition this order becomes a law that the subconscious mind obeys in the beginning it was only a conscious desire but now it becomes an unconscious need because the subconscious acts at our acts on our behalf it acts on what it thinks we want so there are what are some examples of habits first we're going to look at some good

habits so i was able to put together three habits that i consider constructive one is i make my bed every morning no matter where i am every morning i make my bed and i feel like that helps me to um set things in the right direction another habit that i consider healthy for me is that whenever i see stairs i take them instead of taking an elevator so that i can get a little extra exercise in and another habit that i consider healthy for me is that i meditate every morning it's the very first thing that i do every day and i don't proceed with my day except on very rare occasions when i would meditate later in the day but i um i meditate every day

so we're going to open the chat now and i'd like you to share what you consider are some healthy habits for you some habits that you believe contribute to your well-being to your health to your tranquility and i'm going to read a few of these off as you share so if we can open the chat okay so drinking more water a journal each night before bedtime i walk in a garden every day prayer exercise more drinking water i watch my thoughts qigong and tai chi meditation i read every day working out wow you all have a lot of very healthy habits fantastic getting fresh air

do something creative more tai chi and qigong nature bath play music um continuing education rosicrucian exercises kiss my dog oh that one that one gets extra credit uh record your dreams okay well thank you so much for sharing those and you're welcome to continue to share and now let's consider some habits that may not be quite so helpful to us and i'm going to include a few here that are from this monograph that talks about habits just to get us started um some physical habits could be social smoking you know we get in um in a certain environment and

feel the need to light a cigarette or to drink alcohol when we may not normally do that or maybe to drink more alcohol than we normally do and that may not be healthy to us overeating when we're stressed the monograph also talks about mental habits and it gives the example that when people stop themselves from criticizing what they see or hear they stop themselves from gossiping it's because they have formed the habit of doing so and their subconscious responds to that ma that mental need so those people have commanded their subconscious not to engage in those behaviors ralph lewis wrote that when people don't have all the information that we need our mind naturally fills in the blanks

so we can form a new habit to pause before we fill fill in the blanks we don't like that um we like to have closure we like to know what's going on and when we don't have that our mind starts filling in the blanks but it doesn't have the information so it's filling in with stuff that we've made up so we can form a new habit to pause before we fill those blanks in in our mind so now i'm going to share some of the some of what you all have shared in the chat and so now let's share habits that are not contributing to your well-being but you still find yourself doing that sometimes so we have speaking poorly about oneself um to have a drink if i'm not otherwise

busy is a bad habit of mine someone wrote biting my nails overthinking overeating and eating at the wrong time spending time on social media i think probably almost everyone could put that one down gossiping negative thoughts and overeating news consumption it's another one that i think many people don't even realize that we've been conditioned we have there are experts in the field of understanding our habits and behavior and preferences and some of these experts use that information to take advantage of us and to draw us in more and more they know what our habits are they know what will draw us in here are some other um some other habits that aren't helpful to us

daydreaming or mind wandering uh bad relationships procrastinating not saying no enough avoiding helpful behavior so please feel free to continue to add information there if you like and i'm going to share a little bit about some of the things that we can do we can transform habits that are not helpful to us and again our habits lead directly to our behavior we can transform these by reviewing our day and being aware of when that behavior or that habit occurred because most of our habits are unconscious to us much of what we do throughout the day is habitual experts have researched it seems based on the research that between 80 and 90

of the thoughts that we have today were the same thoughts that we had yesterday that we are not having as many novel thoughts and experiences as we may believe that we are and we can also celebrate not only when we change a habit but we can celebrate just when we recognize that we are acting habitually just stop and say wow even though i just did that again at least this time i recognized it we can also create what's called an activation trigger and the best example i've ever heard of this is someone who wants to work out in the morning but you know how it is when you wake up and it's cold or you're tired or whatever it is so a good example of an activation trigger is to sleep in your workout clothes so then it's easier when you get up to go ahead and work out than it is to

change into something else and not work out there are actually research labs that are called habit labs the university of southern california has a habit lab that has really produced some exceptional material to help people also the habit lab at stafford university has produced an app to help people spend less time online so it includes many tools it includes news feed blockers you know sometimes we get news feeds well at least i do and i'm like i never signed up for that i don't even know where this came from and i don't know how to turn it off and there are times that we do say oh yeah i'd like to get more information from this organization

and then these new news feeds program us so stanford has the the habit lab allows us to track our habits and to find ways to reduce our time online and one example is through their app you can pick websites that you want to spend less time on so if you find that you are continually going to a particular news website you can put that in this app and it will remind you you know you said you didn't want to go to this website as much anymore or you could do the same thing with facebook or anywhere where you go down the rabbit hole you know how that can be and and sometimes this is a psychological event it's an emotional and physical thing maybe we're feeling overwhelmed we've hit a dead end

with something we researched so it feels good to click and click and click and click but then you look up and it's been an hour or two that you just totally wasted or i should say that i just totally wasted i can speak for myself wendy wood and david meal have written an article called healthy through habit interventions for initiating and maintaining healthy behavior and change and they present this data in order to help people understand what they can do so that their change sticks because often we have goals and we really believe we want to do a certain thing but then we don't do it and we're going to explore this in a minute so what these two authors wendy wood and david neal have shared is that people are most likely to make healthy choices

when decisions are structured to make that choice easy when other people are making the same choice and then by making plans if i do this it will lead to that it's not enough just to set goals there's been so much research on people who will start a diet for example to lose weight and they may lose the weight but it won't stay off and there are researchers who show the reason for this the three main habit-breaking interventions that we can use are cue disruption environmental engineering and monitoring our inhibition cue disruption happens when we change our environment for example when we move this is a great time to break a habit that's not healthy for us anymore and to start a new habit

or if we start a new job or any of life's transitions even if we go on vacation or visit a novel place so some ways that people are trying to help others and not just take advantage by knowing what our habits are and then making money off of that there are organizations that use this knowledge about our habits to create healthier environments and structures some examples are in certain cities when someone moves when it's a recent a person who's recently moved they offer public transit price reductions or free public transportation this person has gone into a new environment they may have wanted to take public transportation when they were in their old place but it was so easy to keep doing the same thing

but they offer price reductions for recent movers and the effectiveness the effect of the effectiveness i got it is about double when this is presented to new movers instead of people who've lived in the community for a while also employers can offer employees health and wellness programs for new employees when someone is a new employee they're much more likely to embrace a a new habit or first-time parent incentives there are hospitals and other organizations that offer incentives for new parents who have this new this new life experience for them to start something new maybe creating healthy meals for the whole family the second thing that's recommended in this article is environmental engineering

and it's suggested to add friction to unhealthy behaviors a good of the example of this is banning smoking in public places so you make it difficult to do something that's unhealthy and you can also um do the opposite so you can when engineers are building a building they can design the building so that stairs are more prominent than elevators so that when you walk in the stairs are right there but you have to go looking for the elevator or some supermarkets offer a fast lane checkout line for people who buy healthy food and some cafeterias do that too so you can set up the environment to support healthy choices and then the third area that the authors mentioned is monitoring or inhibition and this and

right on uh a package showing the labeling information what's in the package that you're buying or if you've ever seen a pack of cigarettes you couldn't be more clear this smoking cigarettes kills also there are wearable devices that deliver a nudge to adopt healthful behavior so there are smart watches and other devices that can remind you to do certain things reading one's self on of unhealthy habits requires neutralizing the context cues that automatically trigger habit performance so we have to either remove ourselves from those cues that trigger us again like social drinking we may not drink too much other times but when we're around when we're in a certain atmosphere we drink our smoke more than

is healthy for us and there's also been a lot of research on the challenges that formerly incarcerated people experience when they go back to the same home environment and the same friends so even though they may have changed their habits while they were incarcerated when they get back to that old environment it's extremely challenging to not go back into those old habits our monographs share two types of will you are here today on this teleconference because you arranged to do so that is one type of will but something inspired you to do that and that's the other type of will there is an unconscious impulse that inspired you well maybe i'll go to the department of instruction teleconference day

and then there's the first kind of will that i mention that we made plans to be here so you made sure you were by a computer and that you had enough time to log in so those are the two types of will and the monograph that addresses will says that when we have a lack of will or when it's challenging for us to apply our will it's either because the subconscious impulses is not strong enough to cross the threshold of the objective mind so it's not going to lead to a voluntary action on our on our part so the impulse to get us to do something is not strong enough or the other option is the message gets through but our objective mind doesn't want to hear it it is judging that there is no reason to take that urge into account and the example that's used in the

monograph is that we may have felt the desire to study a monograph but haven't done so even when the even when we had the time even when we had a perfectly good sanctum right there that we could have gone to but we chose not to with the urge came but we ignored it and the monograph discussing this subject says you are the one who for more or less valid reasons chose not to study your monographs which is like saying that you placed yourself in opposition to your inner self and of course there are many examples of this now why would we do that why would we get an inner impulse and then choose not to follow it it's because we have multiple personalities that compete with each other in psychology these are called mental modules

and we have these different cells programmed into our neural networks our brains are actually wired as different cells and we've talked about this on other teleconferences an example for me is that i have a self that is a daughter i have a self that is a sister a friend a hiker a person who relaxes i have a rosicrucian self i wasn't born that self wasn't with me when i was born i wasn't a rosicrucian when i was born but my brain wired that self into me with every rosicrucian experience so you can imagine if we have all these different cells these different mental modules that are created when we have an experience we will

network we will create networks in our brain of everything around the sight the smell the feel the taste the touch and that becomes that experience and then that grows into like i said an experience of being a rosicrucian or an american or a woman so the reason that there are times that we get an inner urge but we don't follow it is because there's some aspect of our self that thinks it's better not to and we can observe these different selves we can see ourselves clearly but we have to admit that we have these different selves and it's challenging because often we're embarrassed by certain cells we don't want other people to see them this is referred to as our shadow side in some traditions so

we pretend it's not there and then it just acts out until we finally give it attention so there is something within us that puts these different selves into action and a baseball fan i can relate to a coach who puts different players in the game and the coach might think okay today the best person for what julie is dealing with the best self to have in the game is understanding and kindness but let's say i feel some kind of a threat or i um i am uncomfortable then that coach is going to put a different self in the game because the self that the coach is protecting julie and wants to make sure that whatever self is in the game is the

one to do that we can talk to the coach and ask why the coach put that particular player in julie's game today and we can understand what we may call a bad habit is really the coach putting a self in the game because it felt that my person julie needed to feel safe or needed comfort or needed to be cared for so the coach put somebody different in the game rather than an urge i may have felt to be understanding and compassionate that day we're such complicated creatures aren't we this is going on all the time we are activating different selves all the time

and we're going to practice this now you're going to practice talking to the self that's in the game so choose a recent situation where you may not have behaved in the way that best reflects your ideals so just think of a time where you're like maybe i overreacted or i i'm surprised i acted that way and now move your body just a little bit and ask to speak to whatever put that part of yourself in the game it can be a coach it can be a ceo it can be the controller asked to speak to whatever made that decision and say

who was in the game that day who did who did you put in the game that day the coach knows exactly who the coach put in the game so maybe the coach says to you i put fear in the game i put anger in the game or i put withdrawal in the game now move your body again slightly and ask to speak to that aspect of yourself so ask to speak to fear or anger or withdrawal and now ask that aspect of yourself why it behaved that way in that situation that you're

thinking of and don't ask for yourself act is so weird person like for me i would say um why was what was fear doing in in jewel's life that day what was anger doing in julie's life that day talk to your fear or your anger or whatever that aspect was no matter what aspect you spoke to

it provided a similar answer if you met fear if fear was in the game that day and you say why did you fear why did you act that way with with julie fear is going to say because i'm fear because the po the coach asked me to get off the bench and in the game the coach thought fear was needed then so we don't need to feel ashamed or embarrassed because fear was in some aspect thought fear was called for in that moment or anger was called for so now move your body a little bit again just shift a little bit and go back to the coach and ask the coach instead of whatever you put in that day whatever player you put in the game that

day could you have put a different player in for julie that day so let's say there was a situation and the coach put anger in i i behaved in an angry manner i could say to the coach could you have put irritation in was full-blown anger needed or could you have just put irritation or annoyance in the game would that still have protected our person julie so we always have this option anytime something comes up an old habit or emotions that aren't serving us we the the value is in observing it because if we pretend if we're if we're embarrassed about it we pretend it

didn't happen we didn't see it that habit that emotion that thought will continue forever and will act out even more so the monographs also share that to transform a bad habit or a habit that's not healthy for us into a healthy habit we need to order our subconscious to substitute a positive law for the negative law it had been obeying so we're talking to our subconscious mind remember all our subconscious mind wants to do is what it thinks it's been ordered to do anytime we have what the monographs call auto suggestion it must be positive for example subconscious remind me of such and such a thing not subconscious don't forget

so it's positive instead of saying subconscious remind me not to be proud we would stay subconscious show me how to be humble so the subconscious is just hearing what we say don't say it in the negative a lot of research has been done on the subconscious picking up messages like if someone says to themselves i wish i wasn't so fat or i wish i wasn't dumb or i wish i wasn't so plain instead so what the subconscious hears is fat or dumb or plain when we speak to the subconscious we use the positive so subconscious help me to become fit subconscious help me so that my thoughts are sharp

subconscious help bring the beauty out in me so we're going to practice a meditation now and before we do this i want to one habit behavior or emotion that you want to change one habit behavior or emotion that you want to change just one now in your mind's eye focus on this so intensely that it cannot go by unnoticed in the future be really clear about what this looks like even if you find it embarrassing or

unattractive see this occurring and you are on it so you are of course not visualizing more of this happening you are visually visualizing right now that you are perfectly aware of when this habit occurs so what we're visualizing is your awareness we're visualizing that you are aware when this habit is occurring this habit that no longer serves you you are seeing yourself in a moment you can start with the past seeing it and then see yourself in the future whoops whoops i did that again so see yourself sometime in the future

and you see yourself doing this thing that isn't helpful to you anymore and pat yourself on the back because you were aware of it even if you did not change you were aware of this habit so in your mind's eye pat yourself on the back you saw it you are no longer blind to this this habit this emotion this behavior that is no longer serving you is perfectly clear to you now you know when it's happening it's no longer hidden you know there was a good reason for you doing it at some point maybe when you were a child this was effective behavior or maybe when you were in a more threatening situation the coach put that aspect of yourself in the game for a good reason

but the environment's different now so open your eyes for a minute because we're going to make a shift move around a little bit now we're going to focus on a habit a behavior a thought or an emotion that you want to embrace that will support radiant health and happiness and peace profound for you if you have a piece of paper or some other way to write it down just write down a word just one we're just doing one now

mentally rehearse yourself establishing this habit or this thought or this behavior or this emotion behaving in this way thinking this thought or feeling this emotion mentally rehearse this see yourself in a future situation in your mind's eye where you have become this maybe you see yourself facing a challenge and you are rising to the occasion now imagine another situation where you successfully have established

this habit or you are behaving this way where you are thinking this thought or feeling this emotion so you're imagining a scant situation in the future going to do this one more time and this time choose a situation that you know will be challenging maybe it's somebody who really pushes your buttons or maybe it's when you're driving that's always challenging so you're visualizing a third situation in which you have established this habit you're behaving this way you're thinking this thought or feeling this emotion really feel it in your body wherever you're feeling this in your

body place your hands on that place so that you can recall this feeling later now really feeling this and with your hand your hands placed on that part of your body so you can recall the feeling later we're going to and tone the vowel sound ohm three times ready inhale [Music] oh

now talk on your earlobes just give them a little tug down this is a direct connection with your vagus nerve and your autonomic nervous system just really programming your whole system to that new state of being now take a deep breath you can let go of your earlobes take a deep breath and while exhaling transmit this new habit behavior thought or emotion mentally to your subconscious visualizing your subconscious as a double of yourself so you can say subconscious establish in me

this habit and say what it is or this behavior or this thought or this emotion do that three times say the word subconscious you are making you are commanding you are giving an order subconscious get its attention if you're able to say this out loud subconscious if it is the will of the cosmic it is

done so mote it be you