Many years ago I spent some time working in a steel works as a metallurgist. A steel works can be a fascinating and quite frightening place to be and, alongside the powerful images of huge furnaces and rolling mills, one of the more beautiful visions that I remember is that of the sand casting process. Rather less brutal and more bespoke than other forming methods, sand casting involved creating an individual mould out of sand, filling it with molten alloy and waiting for the metal to cool and solidify. Once cooled, the only way the shiny new metal component could be retrieved was by breaking the mould. This, for me, is a wonderful metaphor for cultivating a new habit by letting go of the old and breaking through something that constrains us.

Story of My Life

How often do we hear ourselves saying or thinking “That’s the story of my life”? What are we telling ourselves when we say this? Usually it’s something along the lines of “I always do it that way” or “people always treat me that way” or “that’s just the way I am.” This is fine as long as we’re happy with the way things are. But what if the story of our lives is one of constraint, tolerance, repression, or anger? When we convince ourselves that this is the way our life is, then our energy is drained and we become held back from leading our best lives.

In order to cultivate new habits that serve us and boost our energy, we need to re-write those old stories in a much more positive vein. For example, if we are telling ourselves “other people always take me for granted – that’s the story of my life” then our new story might be “I value myself. I know when to say no and how to be assertive.” The kind of stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how we are, are underpinned by our beliefs about ourselves. The key to changing those stories from negative ones to positive versions that serve us well is to change our beliefs.

Attitudes

Some people talk about belief systems in terms of attitude. I can remember being introduced to this idea when I started a new job selling high tech equipment into scientific laboratories. There were some aspects of the job I was really looking forward to – meeting lots of interesting people, mixing with those who were at the forefront of materials science and listening to their hopes and aspirations. There was one aspect I was dreading – attempting to persuade these same people that they wanted to buy our equipment over and above an equivalent from another company. Why was I dreading it? I imagined that those who were involved in selling had to learn a script parrot fashion, regardless of what they truly believed about the product or the customer’s real need, and manipulate their way through to a successful sale.

Then my very wise and wonderful boss introduced me to the idea of adopting a successful attitude. He convinced me that it was ok for me to just be myself, build relationships of trust with my customers and do my best to understand and meet their needs. He understood the benefits of cultivating a healthy belief system and that this would then support the positive stories I told myself about how successful I was at my job. In this way, I broke through the constraints of my negative beliefs around selling and freed myself me to establish new, authentic, empowering habits in my job and then to train others to do the same.

Be compassionate and forgiving towards yourself

In forming new habits, we need to understand that there is a process involved. Some habits have been so long established that making any changes can feel extremely uncomfortable. Sometimes, we need to make the changes one small step at a time. In contrast, sometimes it’s like standing on the edge of a cliff and just deciding to jump! We may experience failure many times before the new habit starts to feel easy. We know we’ve made it when doing something the new way starts to feel easier than doing it the old way.

During this time, we need to forgive ourselves our transgressions and show ourselves some compassion. It’s easy to beat ourselves up over our failures. It takes fortitude to forgive ourselves and move on.