Mind Traps
We all have default ‘ways of being’ learned from a young age. You have a unique blend of these formulated and habituated patterns with which you respond to life’s circumstances. By the time you are an adult, these basic survival patterns are your largely overlooked ‘default’ setting in life. These are brilliant ‘hard-wired’ survival responses that are a part of the design of being human. For the most part they have worked for you and have gotten you this far.
So – like them or hate them – your patterns aren’t going anywhere. Fortunately, you don’t need to get rid of them in order to have freedom to create your life. (Nor would you want to – they are really useful in some circumstances!)
The key to your freedom is recognizing the patterns as they are running, and interrupting them when they are not serving you. When you see the pattern for what it is you are, in that moment, bigger than the pattern. This is an easy concept to understand, but challenging to actually to do in the rough and tumble arena of life where stuff is coming at you right and left.
One way to get a handle on a pattern is to identify the ‘mind trap’ that comes with each pattern. A mind trap is a circular trail of thinking/actions/emotions that keeps you stuck and inside the pattern – like a skipping record. Understanding your own mind traps is crucial to breaking the trance that these patterns cause that keep you stuck and not out there achieving your dreams.
Let me give you an example of one of my own mind traps - Perfectionism:
1. I imagine something awesome I want to create in the world (like this blog post for example)
2. I get really enthused and immediately envision making the imagined creation bigger, better, more profound, etc. (and I like making stuff really EXTRA!)
3. This trail of thoughts (bigger and better) inevitably sets the success bar REALLY high!
4. The actual creation does not often meet this lofty goal of awesomeness, and so is judged not good enough, and;
5. I don’t complete the creation, or the creation is never good enough to be presented to the world, and;
6. I feel stuck and frustrated.
7. I make myself wrong and feel bad/guilty/lazy/incompetent. (because I should know better and I can do better that that - blah, blah, blah)
It’s all so boringly predictable and mundane, isn’t it? But it’s just how ‘The Dave’ is wired. It is as reflexive as your leg kicking out when the doctor hits that particular spot on your knee with that rubber mallet thingy. To escape this particular mind trap, I have found it helpful to think of the creation going out in the world as a ‘first draft’, rather than the [perfect] final version. That little mental mind game helps me let go of the perfectionist pattern long enough to get me moving. I also find it helpful to put time pressure on my creative tasks – a tight deadline that forces me to move.
(And that’s it.)
Notice that I don’t need to change/suppress/fix the pattern. I just need to clearly understand how it works, and what techniques and approaches have the best chance of releasing me from this particular mind trap. I don’t even have to do that perfectly or do that every time. But to the extent I move beyond my default stops, I get to live a created life.
You may see yourself in this pattern and mind trap, and if you do than you could try my escape technique and see how it goes. Or, maybe this isn’t one of your mind traps so you don’t need the technique. Either way, the bigger lesson is the importance of studying your own unique patterns and accompanying mind traps, so you can stop letting them run your life!
Love,
David