Triggers

The first step in fixing a problem, is the awareness that you have a problem.

Nobody is perfect, we all have issues and problems, but the main thing is once you know there is a problem is doing something about it.

If you have a repeating problem, such as bad behaviour, or addiction, or finding yourself in the same negative situation over and over again, you must figure out your triggers.

Ask yourself, what rituals do you have that could be causing this thing?  Do you constantly get up late?  Or put things off?  Or fly off the handle for no reason?

What environmental factors are contributing to you behaving a certain way?  Are you surrounded by assholes?  Was your role model a dick?  Are you in a messy, unkept place?  Are you learning and growing, or forgetting and dying?

These things are all triggers.

Pause for a moment, and look around at your mental stimuli, your learned behaviour.  How do you think?  Do you try to look at things from all angles?  Or do you have one influenced focus?  Do you get the other side?  Or just reinforce over and over again?

What about your physical stimuli, and what you surround yourself with?  Is your work area clean, and focused?  Or is it a mess and and nothing gets done?

What about your rewards system?  What behaviour gets rewarded?  What feels good, or gets you praise?  How do these triggers work?

Once you figure out your triggers, understand what your next reaction is that leads you on the path to poor behaviour, and change that part.

It’s harder to change a trigger then it is a reaction to the trigger because at first, the trigger may be unconscious.

But you know when you’re doing something you shouldn’t, something you’ll have to pay for down the road, so take it back a step and replace the negative behaviour with a positive one.

It will feel strange, but that will change the association.  This trigger, no longer results in that particular behaviour.  It results in a new behaviour.

Then there is the secret to success.  The reward.

At the end of the cycle, after you have been triggered, performed a new behaviour, still give yourself the reward that you would have gotten if the behaviour was bad.  Eat that chocolate bar.  Watch that movie.  Be lazy.

By changing the behaviour associated with that trigger, and implementing some positive reinforcement at the end, will make that better choice stick.

And before you know it, you’ll be triggered for good!