Not Again!

You swore it would never happen again.And there you are repeating the same thing that happened before in the past.

Have you ever found yourself in that situation where you you tell yourself
"I'm never going to do that again", or "I'm not going to let that happen to me again".
And then you find yourself repeating the same behaviour over and over and over again.

How do you stop those repeated patterns of behaviour?

You see a few years ago, we went to walk our dog snowy winter day, and I was holding the leash and Rufus was very excited about the snow and he ran down the stairs.

We have a wooden flight of stairs in front of our house six stairs down
and Rufus went to go and I went with him. Poof! I wiped out down the stairs. I hit my tailbone hard on the wood, banged my wrist, my elbow and the middle of my back on the way down.

I froze at the bottom.

You know, if you have ever had a fall like that, and if you have, then you know,
you hit the bottom and you freeze before the pain sets in.  All of a sudden the pain came.

I can't believe this happened again. Gregg helped me up and got me inside and set me up on the couch with ice packs.

And then I said the words. I said the most important words; "Every winter I fall down."

Gregg looked at me and I looked at him, and he said "when did you decide
that?" and I went "oh darn it"

Because here's the thing, in order for me to fall every winter, at some point in my life,
I had to decide to do that. As I lay there on the couch with ice packs everywhere thinking about every winter as far back as I could remember, I had a big fall.

In fact, one time I went  to visit my chiropractor and I said my lower back was bugging me and as he was examining me,  he said "how many times have you fallen on your tailbone?"

And I said "well how many Winters have I been alive for". As I remembered this, I thought "when did I decide that?"

You see, we make these decisions.We make them unconsciously. Normally, we're not aware of making these kinds of limiting decisions and it's all unconscious. You see all of your behaviour is unconscious. And learning is also unconscious. When we have an event like where we make a decision, and we learn something, it's unconscious.
You're usually not aware of it until it comes into your awareness like it did this time for me.

So maybe you find yourself repeating behaviours or patterns of behaviour over
and over and that's a great thing I think, because once you become aware that there's a pattern now you can choose to break the pattern.

This is what we do in Time Line Therapy®. This example of "every winter I fall down" is an example of a limiting decision.

You know, some people talk about limiting beliefs. We talk about limiting decisions
because think about it, in order for you to believe something, you had to have decided it was true.

For me to believe that every winter I had to fall down, at some point I had to decide that that was absolutely true and using Time Line Therapy®,  I could go back to the beginning, the moment that I made the decision and then I could undecide it.

From that moment on I have not fallen down. It doesn't matter how slippery it is how much snow is one the ground, I haven't fallen down. 

And once you're able to let go of a limiting decision in the past you can put in a new decision of what you want to believe instead.  I wanted to believe that I have the balance of a penguin. Penguins have excellent balance. They are designed to walk on ice. I accepted the new belief that I have the balance of a penguin and since then, for the last three Winters, I have not fallen down. I haven't fallen down any other time of year either.

If you're noticing repeat patterns of behaviour in your life, ask yourself that important question; "when did I decide this?" Now, asking that question, implies that you did decide it. Maybe you didn't choose it consciously, but maybe you chose it unconsciously.

If you're curious to know more about this, I teach Time Line Therapy®  in the NLP practitioner training. If you want to know more about the training, visit www.teriholland.ca/nlpprac

What is holding you back in life from having what you want?