How To Stop Backsliding Summary

[Nic]

How to Stop Backsliding/ How to Stop Procrastinating

 

Book Mastery by Robert Greene

Homeostasis is a word that is used in the world of biology & cybernetics which is the study of systems, how they work. Systems are items interlinked together into a complex web of feedback loops. It can be a human cell, a body, a tree, a computer system, they have a center of gravity, and the center of gravity is its homeostasis., It’s the place where the system like to gravitate towards and stay at, it has set a track record of proven safety. Systems face threats and they have to get good at providing a space so that it can survive and reproduce. 

 

In your body there are many homeostasis models going on without you noticing it. Blood pressure, temperature must be at the right level and so on, it’s everywhere in your body. You have to have such balance in so many things it’s like walking on high wire. It’s like your unconscious mind and your body system is doing it all for you. It cares for your survival and what has always worked before for you in your life.

You want to change when you wake up, when you go to sleep, what kind of food you eat, how much you exercise, how you behave in your relationship, how do you perform at your job, but our subconscious mind tends pulls us back to where we were. It just does what always worked. Your brain is biased towards keeping you in the same place. The unconscious mind doesn’t distinguish between what works king of well, really well or what is dysfunctional but still keeps you alive. But we do not only want to survive, we also want to thrive.

The mind is like a thermostat that keeps the homeostasis of your life & habits. Emotions pull you back towards the center. Sleeping habits, drug addiction, clean diet…

This is why you will never create a great magic pill to have a fulfilling life, because you have to exert emotional labor to make change happen in your life. Emotional labor happens when you resist the homeostasis. You have to exert will power to move off center and reset the center point. Big change is possible, it’s not impossible to clean your diet, sleep earlier etc. You can do it but it need a little extra work, a craftiness.

 

There is also homeostasis in groups, family friends, colleagues, corporations, spiritual groups, communities, cities, governments.

So what do we do about it, how do you navigate around that force?:

Be aware that homeostasis exist, it keeps you alive, it’s a law like gravity. Just being aware of it is a good start. Expect it to happen, it will kick in. The mind will resit, the body will resist and the people around you will resit when you start to change. The mind will create all sorts of crazy thoughts and stories, millions of rationalisation and excuses for why you should go back to where you were. The body will feel psychosomatic stuff, like getting a little cold, your mind create those.

Be prepared for serious negotiation, find the balance in your inner dialogue. You can’t bull your way to the problem, it will fail on the long run and go back to the center of gravity. This one of the most challenging aspect of personal development, is the emotional labor that goes it the serious negotiation.

So when you have war inside your head, you have to go through it, you have to hold on, stay with that and perceiver through the challenge, get some resolution, come out the other end and not quit, this is emotional labor. People are not self actualized because they cannot cope with this emotional labor.

They are support system if you want to change something, they will support emotionaly, get into a community.

Put a meditation habit in place, it give you more awareness of all the emotional bullshit that happens in your brain and see the homeostasis coming. Meditate daily.

Do visualization of what you want to create in your mind 10-20 min. 

Make sure you change the right thing

Change one thing at a time

If you dont’ feel 100% committed, there will not enough wiliness to change the habit you want to change. There must be no excuses & no wiggle room. If you make like a 5% wiggle room, that 5% can kill you. 

You have to see that what you do is important. Set a meditation habit! 

Failure this time will make it easier next time. 

We tend to over exaggerate the number of times we tried to change our habits. The mind makes the obstacle bigger than it is.

Don’t underestimate how much difference only one change can make.

If you could see what 20 years of 20 min meditation a day would make in your life, you would meditate religiously every single morning like your life depended on it. Become visionary of your own life, see how the little change can snowball into massive qualitative explosion of change. Give it the value that it deserves and tell yourself how important that is for you.

Go and make some big changes in your life.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Nic

[Elton]

@Nic mastery by George Leonard

[Nic]

Sorry, thanks!