Welcome to Islamic Life Coach four part podcasts. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizedly successful. Now your host, doctor Donald Upther.
Speaker 2:Hello hello hello everyone. Peace and blessings me upon all of you. Last week, we talked about living your best life and how that has to do with your long term goals and keeping in check if your conditioned actions are about immediate verification and short term pleasure. If so, it is very important to decondition those unwanted actions you can live your best life. Today's and last week's podcasts are related. So if you haven't listened to episode hundred and eleven, I suggest you do that. Because the concepts build on each other. But I will describe them with a short description here as best as I can. Deconditioning is basically taking an apparent automatic response to a circumstance and changing it to a deliberate chosen response. It involves breaking neural pathways and creating new ones in its place. This can be done through the use of restriction and punishment. I don't personally like this method and you'll find out why. I think the method that I will propose is much better because I think your mind is much stronger than any conditioning that you might be living right now. Conditioned response is basically a trigger. Something outside of you that compels you to take action while you remain unaware of the thought and the feeling behind it. That's why I'm talking about mind over triggers today. A circumstance in your life, an object person, or even an uncomfortable feeling becomes a trigger that cues the immediate taking of the action. Trigger means we didn't engage in the thinking and the feeling before the action when we actually always have the option to do so. The thought and the feeling behind all actions is always present. With or without our awareness. Trigger means that the thinking just lies outside of your awareness. It doesn't mean that the thought behind it doesn't exist. Or it ceases to exist. So the direct action that seems to be related to the trigger is a conditioned response. We all have a multitude of them. Conditioned responses are inherently bad. They all don't need to be changed. Just the ones that create unwanted outcomes need to be changed. In fact, these conditioned responses make our lives really, really easy because they take the burden away of having a think about every little detail of our daily life. Conditioning releases a lot of our active attention from being consumed. You don't have to decondition all of your actions. This is a super important function of your nervous system. Some examples of good condition responses are that you hear the a van and you get up to get ready to pray. You usually wear a job and you step outdoors without one for whatever reason. And the breeze in the back of your neck raises and unease. You feel like this is unusual. This is not how usually feels when I go outdoors. And then you remember that you're in your private backyard. This unfamiliar feeling is a good trigger to a conditioned response for somebody who chooses to wear a hijab. Not all triggers are created equal. When I sit in my car, it triggers me to put my felt on. When I change the gear to drive the car, it triggers me to say the door of traveling. It triggers me to make the door asking Elsma Nodala to keep everyone safe in the car and to take it to the destination safe. I don't want to get rid of that trigger. You have multiple triggers in your day that are serving you an immense value that you don't want to get rid of. This design is so beautiful to parallel because the exchange of information between your conscious and your subconscious mind is seamless. What I'm trying to say is that only the conditioned unwanted triggers, not all of them. It's a matter of mindfully picking which triggers creating an undesirable outcome and changing only that. When I took my kids into bed, it triggers me to kiss their forehead. And if I don't do that and I walk away, then I have this feeling of unease that I'm forgetting something. And then they notice it too because it's their trigger. They know that as soon as mama puts them to bed, she kisses their forehead. So if I miss this step, they're prompted to ask, Similarly, at work before starting to examine a patient, I'm triggered to wash my hands. After I'm done examining, I'm triggered to wash my hands again. These are all good triggers. The word trigger has a negative association with it and I can understand why trigger in the shared language meaning usually means something unwanted. But if you start to look at it in a neutral or even positive perspective, It will help you move away from judgment of your triggers, and that helps you resolve them quicker. Triggers are not good or bad. They just are. It's your brain's way of making its job easier. You just have to learn which trigger you want to keep and which you want to let go. I suggest you start by looking for triggers that are helpful to you. This will create an entry into your deeper understanding of triggers While looking for unwanted results from triggers, it might be putting you into judgment and blocking you from seeing the benefits of this arc. So as an alternative, look for positive triggers. This is a very easy way to smooth yourself into looking for automations in your life. Where are there certain circumstances that are leading you to take actions directly and creating positive results in your life? Just notice that for stars. And then by extension, you'll start to notice where triggers are creating good results in your life as well. And doing it this way will come with less of a baggage because when you're starting to analyze your negative behaviors, you won't have as much judgment attached to it, and you will be more open to applying these steps of change. To look for positive triggers. Maybe they're like the ones I described to you or maybe they're different. This way will ease you into loom for negative triggers that you want to change. Create an inventory using this method of what you've been doing so far that you don't like the effects of. Do it on a daily, weekly basis. Even a lifetime inventory, just start an account of what you'd like to change, and make it a neutral experience Don't use it to feel bad about yourself, but rather be curious, what isn't happening that has led you to this point? Now let's talk about how to change these unwanted behaviors. And the most popular, like I said, is to try to decondition these negative triggers is that people are told to shortcut their way by restricting themselves. Like I said, usually through the use of restriction or punishment, putting the good old well power to test. In cases like this, you can lock stimulus away, like you can hide the battery or you can hide the remote, or you can unplug the TV or you can pack the TV and put it in the attic. But when urge arises, you're going to reverse all of that and find a way to act on the conditioned response of watching TV. So hiding the TV, placing the phone in a lockbox, locking it away and throwing the key is one trick. But the subconscious, primal mind will find a way to answer that art For that dopamine hit and you will find yourself in front of the screen one way or another. Wondering the same thing. I don't know how this happened. I don't know why this keeps happening. I don't know how I got here. Or in another example if you have a habit of biting your nails. Deconditioning in a traditional sense would involve applying the stop biting your nails polish, which has a better taste than it's supposed to deter you from biting your nails. Or they tell you to wear gloves In a sense, all of these are bad habits, but habits don't just happen to you. Your actions are not just happening to you. There is always an underlying cause, some mental prompt of thought that causes the behavior. You can try and manipulate your bad habits by shifting yourself or even by rewarding, not engaging in the habit. But this doesn't help you understand why this is happening in the first place and it will help you recognize the skill of future conditioned responses. Reinforcement is a positive consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior occurring again while punishment is a negative consequence that decreases the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. But this method only works temporarily and it doesn't empower you, doesn't take you beyond a primal understanding of behavior modification. Remember, we talked about problem stocks. This traditional teaching of reinforcement and consequences is very much treating our human brain strictly as an animal brain. Pablo rang the bell every time the dogs saw food and eventually dogs were salivating just with the ringing of the bell. Without the food. Food and salivation is an unconditioned response. Bell and salivation is a conditioned response. Then he was able to decondition this behavior when he rang the bell enough times without the food. Eventually, the dogs stop salation. Because they didn't see the food. This is an example of b conditioning without the reinforcement. When the behavior is not rewarded, it disappears. But all of this process omits thought modification. It omits mental and emotional growth because that's the process of self purification that a human being needs That's the process of learning for you how to love yourself unconditionally despite of your shortcomings and pitfalls. This is the process of self development. Because when you get to know yourself better, you get to understand the design of a law as the shortcuts work, but then there will be more triggers. Or unwanted behavior that will develop over lifetime, and you won't be equipped to handle it. And inevitably, you will make it mean happening to you because there's something fundamentally broken about you, so you better learn this process. Of course, you can decondition and undesired action just strictly going through willpower, negative and positive reinforcement, getting an accountability partner, and getting your cigarettes locked up or putting limits on social media app. But these external reinforcements will eventually fail unless you have pain yourself looking for why you are seeking that stimulation, or it will fail to serve you when another trigger gets programmed in. You will not know how to deprogram it without making it mean anything negative about you. Your habits don't define you. Your actions are not your identity. Every bad habit you've developed can be seen as a curriculum to help you understand your sensitivities that are present to help you become a better person. If you decommission an action using the reward and punishment pass, you will miss out on all of this learning opportunity. There are countless powerful influences of the modern world that are constantly compelling you towards short term pleasure. But learning why you're specifically inclined towards certain behaviors and taking control of them using your faculties makes you a much powerful human being. Because then you are able to channel that insight into creating something beautiful and much more powerful out of your life. You can channel it into realizing your dreams and aspirations. This is where I believe the real growth of the human being lies, and this is what sets us part from Pablo's dogs. While the rest of the advice out there is telling you to do it with a method that's essentially worked for dogs, And I mean, it's fine if that's the level of neural capacity you want to work with. We have the animal brain. We can modify it with these tricks But again, you lose out on the greater skill, the much larger benefit of being able to modify your behavior by taking control of your mind. By overcoming an urge, which makes your mind a much stronger weapon against those triggers. Mind over triggers This method is longer. It requires understanding of the sensations of your body and how to manipulate them with your mind. This method also requires for you to take responsibility that your thoughts create your actions. The highly addicting substance that is outside of you does not caused you to take actions. Taking responsibility in popular lingo is used as a substitute for taking blame. When I say take responsibility, People make it mean that just hurry up and admit to your mistakes already. That's not what I mean here. What I mean is, I know I created this. I know this is a part of my world for a reason, something I am doing is inviting this into my life. What am I thinking and what am I feeling that is creating this behavior? Taking responsibility means answering all of these questions, and then answering how can I stop it at my will? How can I take responsibility for these not because I'm broken, but because I want to rise above them? We haven't been taught to take responsibility. We've just been taught to place blame, either on ourselves or others. Responsibility in a way that I'm telling you guys excludes blame. Deconditioning with mind over triggers method changes neural pathways and it takes some time. This concept and the development of this skill in the upcoming days or weeks will lead you in cognitive dissonance, which again is a phenomenon that occurs at the body's level. People mostly think of it in terms of the mind, but the term refers to the uncomfortable tension that can occur when you hold an old and a new belief together and they're both in conflict with each other. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term, but it is felt at the physiological level. This process can be recalibrating disruptive. It involves reassessing or adjusting your beliefs or attitudes in order to reduce the dissonance. And then work to find a sense of balance again with your thoughts. This discomfort is a rite of passage. You have to experience it because it carries you through to the other side where there is more aids, comfort, and harmony in your life. In times where my growth breaks my previous belief patterns and I experience cognitive dissonance, I embrace the discomfort, and I'm super compassionate with myself. Emmanuel Gonzalez says, getting rid of destructive traits of the self is obligatory. This and other profound teachings like this is why I think he is a real father of positive psychology. Cognitive dissonance will happen because you will be trying on new beliefs when it comes to breaking away from your triggers. And that's okay. Give yourself time and grace. So going back to the formula c dash near c for circumstances dash n for nervous system e for emotions, a for actions, r for results. The circumstances or the object of your addiction does not cause your There's always that space of the nervous system that separates you from that trigger. The nervous system is what causes your actions. The mind over triggers technique that I'm asking you to apply requires you to bring the language of your triggers into consciousness it requires you to wake up your nervous system. That language, that's the one that's creating the emotion of urge for you to act. And this method requires that you are intricately in touch with that urge that you feel right before you act on the trigger. Because this is also what sets us apart from animals. This ability to observe the urge. Now you might say urge is not an emotion. What are you talking about? And the way I explain the urge is emotions are experienced as sensations in the body. And urge is usually a set of strong sensations that compel you to take action. There is urgency and compulsion that is felt at the body's level. That makes you want to take action immediately. That's why I describe urge as an emotion. With mind over triggers technique, we bring the thoughts and the language behind our actions to consciousness, and we anchor ourselves in the sensations of the urge that is created as a result of those dots. This anchoring means that you get really good at recognizing where that urge arises in your body and you get really good at separating from it. You can give yourself space between feeling the urge and acting on the urge, and you get good at recognizing it as an emotion as a sensation of your body. The language that I want you to identify can sound something like this. This cookie looks so good. A little bit of TikTok doesn't sound so bad. I worked so hard. I deserved this now. Recognizing this language is a skill that we're developing. This development of the meta skill will help you get on track for recognizing more thoughts and more language. That might be creating more default actions in the future. So then you can stop them before they become a strong habit. And you will notice that this language of thoughts is gonna appear very, very subtle. These thoughts on the surface don't even look like thoughts. If you play out all of your triggers with the c dash near formula, it will sound like this. Circumstance, driver on the highway, nervous system thought, what an idiot, emotion, urge, action, cut him off, curves out loud or under your breath, feel angry, frustrated, which are both not good for your mental and emotional well-being, and then you wonder why you become so frustrated while driving. Result you act like an idiot. What I'm trying to show you is that nervous system's language, what an idiot, that you apply to the driver seems like a fact, but it's actually a thought. And when you act on that urge of anger, it gives you a relief of emotion. And that relief makes the road rage get conditioned in your body. And then the ongoing story becomes that bad drivers trigger me on the road. A driver cannot trigger you, your conditioned response, your thoughts, the urges trigger you. Or another example is circumstance, walk into the kitchen, and there's a cookie jar on the counter. Nervous system thought is, these cookies are calling my name. Emotion is urge and intense desire. Action is eat everything in the jar. The result is I regret doing this every time. You create more and more of a result where you regret all of your life choices because then you beat yourself up for taking an action that you didn't want to. The cookie jar does not cost the eating, your mind does. Mind creates triggers. The mind can eliminate them as well. So be very aware of the thoughts behind your actions. And I can help you find those thoughts through coaching. I will leave a link for a private appointment in the show notes. Another possibility is that you allow the urge or that intense desire without acting on it. And that too is done through the observation power of your emotions. Something again that animals can't do. There's a famous method called urge surfing that trains you to become approval with your desire before you jump to act on it. Google says, urge surfing is a mindfulness technique used to get through an urge without acting on the destructive impulses. When you notice a surge rather than fighting against it, imagine you are on a surfboard riding with it. Notice the shifting sensations, how they rise and fall come and go. Earth surfing is a technique that can be used to avoid at on any behavior that you want to reduce or stop. Some examples might be smoking, overeating, spending, lashing out on people. In the research I did, it says that urges last no longer than thirty minutes if you don't feed them. But in my personal experience and in my client's experience is usually seconds. Within a few seconds of surfing the urge, Just watching the emotion of the intense desire dissipates it. But you have to be able to do it without an agenda, without the judgment of it. And you also have to remember if you act on the urge, it becomes easier for you to act on it again because more neurons get hired to do the job for next time. The more neurons get recruited, the stronger that mental pathway becomes, and the opposite is true as well, If you surf the urge without giving into it, then that mental pathway becomes weaker and weaker until it shuts off completely. So outlining the steps of successfully decommissioning an action through mind over triggers include identifying the trigger that prompts the undesirable action, finding the language behind the trigger, And again, usually these thoughts are very subtle and they look like facts. And I anticipate, as I see in my clients, you will be spending a lot of time in this step. And the next step is surfing the urge. This step requires you to have access to information stored in your body and requires work till you learn to become comfortable in your body. If you don't know how to interpret the sensations of emotions in your body, you can't do this step. But the good news is that everyone can learn it. And there will be setbacks, and that's okay. You can anticipate that this is not going to be a perfect process. You're gonna probably take two steps forward and one step backwards. And there are no surprises there. It's your body and your brain doing a tantrum when it doesn't get the immediate verification it craves. That is okay. It's a part of the process, very much anticipated. Don't freak out. Don't make it harder than it needs to be. Don't judge the withdrawal. Be compassionate with yourself through the cognitive dissonance, through the growing pains. Continue moving forward. If you're unable to hold yourself in compassion, please seek coaching. I have curated my program in a way that can help you support yourself. Empower Muslim women program, e m w, was created just for this reason. So Muslim women can stand empowered. With that, I pray Olam, we ask you that you have mercy upon us, this whole nation. We ask that you dispel from us hardship and oppression. We ask that you grant this victory in this g hat, this struggle of the within. We ask that you help us against any temptation, external or internal. We ask that you return us to the ways of the profit We ask you all that you make us ambassadors of the light, ambassadors of excellence, Ola, we ask that you illuminate our hearts with the knowledge that we need to live a life of ingredients. Please keep me in the address. I will talk to you guys next time.