Many of you who have experienced that change can be difficult. But, why is it so hard to just do that which you say you want to do and not do that, which you say you don’t want to do. Firstly humans are creatures of habit. Doing the same thing in the same ways fosters a level of familiarity and is comfortable…even those habits that are not in your best interest. Comfort and pleasure are what you seek and by the same token you want to avoid discomfort and pain. Now, what is paradoxical is that in your determination to avoid discomfort and pain you’ll actually cause it; succumbing to an archaic ego driven defense mechanism that had been created ostensibly when you were quite young and that is now running roughshod over you to make sure that you don’t “get yourself into trouble.” How does this happen? Well, when you were young, let’s say a toddler and you broke something that mommy really liked, so you were yelled at and felt shamed; or in early elementary school and you were called upon to answer a question and you didn’t know the answer prompting cruel laughter from your classmates and a stern disapproving look from the teacher, you felt humiliated. Then, your all protecting ego would say, “…see, you are bad because you made mommy angry so you mustn’t play or you’ll get hurt,” or “…you are not smart so you must be quiet so that you don’t get hurt again.” These experiences and others like them create what is called a neural network of encoded sense stimulations of these experiences/events; in other words everything that you saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted along with thoughts and emotions become connected

This neural network of brain cells are connected electromagnetically and electrochemically to these sensory stimulations and will “fire” every time a similar experience/event happens in your life. So, as you grow, similar things happen, you break something, or people laugh at you, or you do something that otherwise incurs the ire of those in authority or that you look up to. Then your ego says, “…see, I told you, that is not for you to do because you are not good enough, smart enough, talented enough or deserving, or whatever else it might have associated to this original experience. These become unconscious conversations that lurk below your awareness level and that conjure up all manner of additional negative emotions like disappointment, rejection, anger, frustration and many others. This is how neural networks get connected to other neural networks and they form very strong barriers between you and effectively challenging yourself in order to grow. These neural networks that continue to fire together will “hardwire” together meaning that they become like a well worn trail or a deep rut or cavernous scratch in a vinyl record. When that happens the default behavior then becomes avoidance and anxiety based. You are then operating from a position of fear. This type of default behavior strives to remain in the comfort zone where there is no growth. You cannot grow in your comfort zone, you must get out. Growth requires stretching, tearing, and breaking out of old tissue physiologically and old psychic constrictions psychologically.

To put it another way, as you grow from a child, you form relationships with everything around you, people, places, things, creatures and the like. Each one of these relationships has an internal depiction or (neural network) that is represented by all the chemicals reactions in your brain that represent that relationship including the feelings and emotions. If you change that relationship then the network breaks and reforms. Think of how it feels to break up in a relationship with someone. It is quite painful and fraught with emotional turmoil, and that is a good break-up. That is how change occurs on any level of your thinking, feeling and doing.