Rewiring our brains is a lot like bushwhacking through thick brush. It’s unknown, sometimes it feels like drudgery, and we build the path as we go.
The paths we walk daily are easy. They feel “natural” because we’ve trained ourselves to know them. They have become second nature because we’ve gone down them so many times. We can walk them with our eyes closed.
Our thoughts and beliefs are the same way. When we don’t consciously attend to our thoughts and actively work to change our beliefs, we travel the same paths. We continue to believe the things we have always believed, and think the thoughts we have always thought. We’ve trained ourselves for this.
To change our thoughts and our beliefs, we need to do some bushwhacking – some clearing, some decluttering, some rerouting. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes walking and re-walking the path to make it the new well worn path. It starts with the decision, it’s propelled by the courage to keep going and eventually gets easier and easier, as the new path becomes the one you travel daily, hourly, moment by moment.
That’s how we change: one thought, one belief at a time.