paulread posted on July 15, 2009 13:36
Have you ever wondered why we often eat things that we know we shouldn't or don't take the time to do things that we know will help us achieve great results?
There are lots of factors which can effect this, however something which is often overlooked is the subject of behavioural programming. So that begs the question what is behavioral programming?
A simplistic example would be this. Have you ever caught yourself or has anyone ever said to you, when you do that your just like your mother or father? I am sure we all have and that is a classic example of behavioral programming at work.
The science behind it is as follows:
From the moment you are conceived in the womb (in utero) you begin receving chemical messages (via hormones) and the shaping of your phsyiology and DNA takes place. A stressful 9 months of labour through sub optimal choices of the parents (nutritional and lifestyle based) and high stress levels will undoubtedly have an effect on the unborn child.
Between the agres of 0-7 (our twiliight years) we pass through the brainwave states of 'Delta' and 'Theta' which is a subconscious state (the imagination period). If you imagine yourself as a blank CD, during this period information is being downloaded upon you (your hardrive) and from this your behavioral patterns and subconscious mind is formed.
Post 7 years to the age of 11 we move from 'Alpha' (this is the first time conscious thought appears) into 'Beta' (12 years plus) which is known as classroom consciousness, which most of us operate at during our adult life.
So why is any of this important?
Well if you think back to the CD analogy I said that during the ages of 0-7 we are downloading information and behaviors into our subconscious mind and forming our behavioral programmes and beliefs systems.
So why is that important?
Beacuse your conscious mind can process 40 bits of information per second and your sub conscious mind can process up to 40,000,000 bits of information per second. So the question is now....what part of brain controls your behaviours and drives your decisions? You guessed it the sub conscious mind!
Again so why is this important?
To explain this I will give you a few examples to illustrate how it works.
Have you ever yourself or do you know someone who is in pain and goes to see a physio or rehab specialist or joins a gym or begins a nutritional plan to reduce aches and pains or help with a health problem and gets great results. Then after a while they stop this positive behavior and often symptoms re-appear. Why would people do this? Well it may be because as a child (in their behavioral programming years ages 0-7) they gained sympathy and attention when they were sick or hurt and it is this sympathy that they are craving so they unknowingly (driven by their subconscious mind) self sabotage their own behaviour.
Another example is one that I have seen first hand in my time in professional football. Many sports people suffer from injury after injury with no logical or biomechanical basis for this. A reason for this could be that they had an overpowering parent or guardian as a youngster who repeatedly told them they were not good enough or didn't deserve their success. As a result when they achieve in sport their subconscious tells them they dont deserve this and injury occurs.
So how does this happen?
The law of attarction states that you attract and draw towards you what you are thinking about in your subconscious mind. So if your subconscious is driven by negative programming then guess what...thats what you are going to get!
I am sure you all know people who are very negative and are always telling you how bad things happen to them...well that is because that is what they believe and their subconscious mind is drawing those things towards them.
We all experience negative thoughts. Reasearch has shown we have up to 70,000 thoughts per day and that 90% of them are negative.
So with this in mind the time has come to change and reframe the way we think and act to help us make optimal choices and achieve our health, fitness and life goals.
Tune in next time to find out how