Changing behavioral patterns -- success stories wanted

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I would like to hear success stories from those who have succeeded in changing long held attitudes/behavioral patterns/personality traits of any kind.

For example, I wrestled in high school and college. When I look back, and reflect on my experiences, I regret that I did not enjoy them more. While I obviously enjoyed it when I won a match, the primary emotions that I remember are stress/anxiety. In short, I worried about winning and losing to the point where it detracted from my enjoyment of the experience (as well as my performance – ie competition anxiety).

Recently I have taken up jiu-jitsu (another form of grappling) as a hobby. While I am enjoying myself, too often I find myself slipping into my attitudes from the past. More often than I would like, my enjoyment seems based on my performance – I am happy when I am doing well, but depressed if I dont do as well as I feel I should.

What I love about grappling (as well as other sports and activities) is the feeling that you get when you stop thinking and everything flows. When you are relaxed and focused, not concerned with the score or anything else, and you feel deeply connected to the beauty and perfection of the movements that you are executing. THAT is what I want. THAT is why I do it. But I find it difficult to pry myself away from old patterns of behavior that prevent this.

Anyway, I’d like to hear examples of people who have been successful in changing these patterns/attitudes/etc.

Mods: Not sure if this should be in IMHO, please switch if it should…

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…and i’m talking about behavioral patterns in ANY area of life, not just the personal example that i used…

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I thought a lot about how to word this post. I don’t want any of it to sound, you know… ego-wankery or anything, but I’ve spent the last couple of years working really, really hard to change a couple serious behavioral patterns. This may all fall into TLDNR-land, but here it is.

In 2003 I graduated from college with no good idea of what I wanted to do, and due to my partner’s post-grad education, ending up in a new place with a rotten job market and no social network. It took me six months to find work and I ended up taking a job in a field not even remotely connected to my education, and while I was happy enough to be doing what I was doing, it wasn’t really what you’d call stimulating or held any room for advancement.
Three years later I find myself lonely, bored, and self-destructive. I’m depressed as hell, not in small-part because I’m seriously overweight from snacking out of boredom and depression, totally sedentary outside of work because I’m a)so damn stressed when I leave work I can’t think about doing anything but going home, making dinner, eating dinner, and collapsing in bed and b) I feel physically like crap all the time because I’m so overweight and sedentary, so I never have the energy to do anything, anyway. I can’t see an end to any of this, and absolutely nothing in my life holds any interest for me any more. I’m ambivalent about my work and starting to hate the place, which doesn’t do either me or my employer any good. I’m stressed and anxious and depressed all the time. I was no longer making art of any kind.

One day I decided I wanted to kill myself. It wasn’t really an intense, well-researched plan, or anything, I just started to think about how there really wasn’t much of anything I was looking forward to in life, and my husband would be better off without me, anyway.
Right about then I realized that there were plenty of things to be excited about in the world, and that if I wanted to enjoy the next sixty-odd years on the planet I’d better figure out how to find those things and make them a part of my life, or I really might as well just go ahead, shoot myself, and stop wasting space on the planet.
I figured all else being equal, I’d rather take a stab at living happily, so I sat down and seriously envisioned a good life: things like feeling well and healthy, and feeling good about my physical self. Like having fun with my partner again, training my dog, and making things with my hands. Being outside a lot.

I started working really hard to get in better shape, and all the extra energy from eating good food and exercising meant I was actually doing interesting and useful things with my time, instead of sleeping or surfing the internet. The only down side was that the more weight I lost the more obsessed I got with food, and I began to slip into the opposite camp from obsessive overeating, and spending all my time analyzing every crumb of food for caloric intake and fat ratios and this and that blah blah blah. I started to get obsessive about exercising, too, and I realized that in addition to being stressed about my job, I was getting so stressed about food that I was beginning to sneak into eating-disorder-land. My relationship was suffering because I was so miserable about everything else and dependent on him, to boot.

At this point, I had a really cliché epiphany both about my job and about my relationship with food, and the extreme stress surrounding both areas, and started trying to figure out how to make a living doing what I really wanted to be doing. I found a job that happened to be exactly the same job I’d done for living expenses in college, in an esoteric field. They were delighted to have me and I was delighted to be doing something where someone was interested in my skills and experience, instead of just being a warm body doing a task. Finding that job was pure luck, and though the work kind of sucks, it allowed me to demand higher pay and much better benefits than I was getting, which meant not only could I quit the job I’d had, but I could work part-time and foster the growth of a small business doing what really made me happy.

I discovered that when my attention was diverted to busy and constructive action, and doing things I found enjoyable and stimulating, good eating habits followed. I only ate when I was hungry and only until I was comfortable. I didn’t snack to kill time. I had less time to exercise but was eating much less, so it worked out okay. I picked up a hobby to finish balancing out my life, devoting a chunk of time both to exercise and mental release in one fell swoop.

At this point, life is pretty good. I have to work pretty hard to keep all these things balanced, or I’ll quite easily slip back into any of those holes: depression if I’m eating crappy food, not exercising, or not balancing work/hobby/relationship, food weirdness, relationship boredom, work stress.

I’m now poised to take the last of the big steps towards the life I envisioned for myself, and though it’s always going to be hard work keeping all those things in balance, it’s much easier now as a way of life than it was in the beginning breaking out of the behavioral patterns. As far as the weight loss thing goes, I lost a massive amount of weight and am getting towards reasonably decent shape, and in the end it wasn’t an eating plan of any kind that I needed, it was a total life overhaul that resulted in every aspect of my life getting better. Too bad I can’t write a book and make a killing selling that one, no? :wink:

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thanks for the reply. so it seems that maybe the overeating was more of a symptom of a general unhappiness than the actual problem, right? was that living situation (unhappiness with the job, etc.) the first time the eating problem emerged?

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Yes. No.

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Wow, Naja, that is quite inspirational, no kidding.

I think it is possible to change yourself, (as Naja did), but it takes total focus, and not just"hard work". You have to visualize your new life in detail, work hard at it while keeping that vision in front of you,and it probably helps a bit to obsess over it as well…

In my own life, after a very lackluster freshman year in high school, I decided I wanted to be in with the “smart kid” crowd. So I did a similar thing, in imagining how it would feel to be smart and do well in school, etc. It worked.

The main thing is to really want it, want it so bad that you can taste it. Any less, and you’re doomed to failure…

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(clearly out of my league) The only behavioral change I attempted of real significance was initiated by a lovely hiking trip somewhere here in California. It was just a day hike; and I remember looking at this lovely place with beautiful shade trees and a little stream, and cigarette butts on the ground. I remember a park ranger telling me once that cigarette butts take a HUNDRED YEARS to decompose. So I made a New Years’ Resolution to stop throwing my butts on the ground. Only one I have ever made, let alone kept.

And kept it I have, I am proud to say. My purses and the pockets of all my jackets and pants always have butts in them, but I throw them away properly now.

There was one other thing I implemented, I decided to try and keep my promises to people and especially to children.

I guess in both cases you could say that my motivation was witnessing the ugly/sad results of the wrongful behavior, and a determination not to produce more of that in the world. I don’t know if that would apply in your situation or not. FWIW, think of the old guys you know who are competitive and winning-motivated. Often, they and their families are missing so much of the important things in life – if the stress doesn’t kill them first.

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I had a lot of mental patterns to change, and I’m still working on some of them.

The key is to catch yourself doing them, then stop. Dismiss them. Change the subject. Relax yourself. Find reasons to think more positive thoughts.

Don’t get down on yourself about it, just move on. Every time. Sure enough, you’ll keep falling back into those patterns time and again. Don’t beat yourself up for this, don’t dwell on it. Just note it and move on.

When you catch yourself stressing out about jiu-jitsu, stop. Let it fall away and instead start thinking about the moves and the flow of what you are watching. Make it a deliberate act to narrate it in your mind and try to feel the flow. When you’re waiting for your turn, turn your mind instead to your own body. Move through your limbs, one by one, checking out your muscles, your feelings, your status, to your opponent and what his strengths are. In other words, lose yourself in the details of the moves, your body, your opponent, the thoughts about the specifics, so that your mind is occupied and therefore, not open to thinking about stressing out.

In some ways, it’s like the whole “good bacteria” thing. If there are no bacteria, the bad ones have room to breed and take over. But if you fill the niche with beneficial and/or harmless bacteria, there’s less room for the bad stuff.

So deliberately fill your thinking with good and/or harmless thoughts and make the effort to give up the negative ones.

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When I was in therapy my therapist gave me an exercise that I thought was really stupid. She told me to carry a paper bag around with me for a week and every single time I though “I should” or “I shouldn’t” I was supposed to write it down on a piece of paper, whatever it was I "should"ed, and put it in the bag. At the end of the week I went to see the therapist and she told me to THROW THE BAG AWAY!!!

I can’t say I never "should"ed again, but I can say it really helped me see how hard I was being on myself and to what little effect. That is, "should"ing does not really work to get you to do stuff; all it does is make you feel guilty. After watching that stuff pile up for a whole week, I resolved to cut it out, and in large part, I have. Sometimes simple, simple-minded-seeming exercises really do work.

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Along the lines of what Chimera and kayT have said- for something like a negative thought pattern, you can take note of the negative thought and push it out of your head, or try to logically talk yourself out of it. For instance, if you start getting too concerned with your performance, tell yourself instead “I’m doing this for fun, and because it’s good for me. It doesn’t really matter if I win or lose.”

Also, for your problem specifically, something like yoga or meditation might be helpful. The point of yoga is to be highly aware of your body, and to move it deliberately. That sort of focus helps you avoid negative thinking. Especially since yoga is not a competitive sport, you can avoid worrying about your performance and instead focus on your body and your movements, like you say you enjoy in ju jitsu. Same thing with meditation- if you can empty your mind of all thoughts, it will be easier to get rid of the negative thoughts.

For me, I’ve got a lot of behavioral patterns I’d like to change, and I’m still working on some of them. The thing is, make yourself aware of it. Notice when you have a negative thought or do something you’re trying to avoid. Then stop. Turn off the negative voice in your head, or argue with it. These negative thought patterns aren’t rational, and if you know that, it’s much easier to tell that little voice that it doesn’t really matter if you lose, because a month from now if you see someone from your ju jitsu group they aren’t going to be thinking, “Hey, it’s that guy who lost that one match last month. What a loser.”

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Thanks for the advice. I have heard sports psychologists mention this type of approach – focusing on details rather than the (possibly overwhelming) whole. It makes sense. I’ll definitely give it a try.

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Are you familiar with Rational emotive behavioral therapy? the idea of logically overcoming your irrational beliefs sounds like it. I have read some books by Albert Ellis (the founder of REBT) and used his ideas with some success in other areas of my life. However, this was not something I knew about back when I wrestled , so I have not yet applied it to this part of my life. I’m not sure why I havent attempted it, it seems like an obvious approach for this sort of problem. Thanks for your advice.

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That’s actually exactly what it comes down to, for me. If I look at the massive, overwhelming spectrum of stuff I had to change, I’d never have had the balls to tackle any of it. Taking it one bit at a time and solving small problems daily, though, that was easy as pie. Hard work, but not difficult, if that makes sense.