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CHAPTER 1
What's a Pattern, and How Do I Know What Mine Are?
... and once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, but that it was turning in a circle. — Gabriel García M árquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome. — Anonymous
Have you ever had a sickening sense of reliving the same events in your life — of even having the same conversations or arguments — again and again? Relationships, jobs, or projects may begin full of hope, but somehow, they don't work out for you. You sense a common theme — the endings and the feelings after each mishap or failure are so familiar. You feel that people are always letting you down, betraying you, demanding too much of you, not giving back what you deserve or that you just can't catch a break. Most of all, every new experience or relationship feels familiar, as if it happened before and you didn't like it the first time around. These experiences are the result of your patterns.
Patterns emerge everywhere, in nature and in life. Patterns bring structure to the universe and give it order. They're present in either the smallest bits or greatest masses of matter. A pattern may be held in place by electrons circling a nucleus or planets revolving around the sun. Patterns are present in our genes, in our cultures, and in the history of our nations. Patterns play an important role in our psychological makeup, personality, and behavior. Jobs and relationships travel familiar paths — and we often feel as if we're going in circles.
This sense of life as a recurring pattern might seem confining at first. If you're trapped in a never-ending circle, what's the use of even trying? But the realization that your life might have certain patterns, and that you have the ability to recognize and modify them, will liberate you. Life doesn't have to be chaotic.
Awareness need not breed gloom or doom. This is one of the most important ideas to remember and take with you through this book. I firmly believe that even in your darkest moments, golden opportunities for insight, reflection, and real change present themselves. In fact, often these are the most suitable times for growth. It's unfortunate, but true: we do more self-improvement when we're down-and-out than when we're happy and peppy. These moments are the biggest opportunity for a breakthrough: When something is not working in your life, why not dig in to find the pattern(s) of behavior underlying your disappointments? Never mind what others may do and say. Only you can change your life.
You might think:
• "Why bother looking back at all? Why would I want to do that? I should let it go, move on."
• "What could I learn? I've tried my best — I'm done."
• "I can't control other people, especially when they've got the power. Give me power and I'll show what I can do — things will be different, you'll see."
• "I just need one lucky break ..."
• "My life is already mapped out for me; this is my destiny."
• "I guess I'm just unlucky — what can I tell you?"
• Or perhaps, "Things are okay ... I'm just going through a rough time."
You will not find the answer by ignoring the past or by being "strong." The real answer lies in a willingness to ask yourself these questions:
• How am I contributing to my own misery, disappointments, unhappiness, setbacks, or lack of achievement?
• Do I really have choices?
• What patterns am I repeating so that I wind up in the same place no matter how different my starting point?
If nothing else, consider this: What harm could come from considering these questions? Not much — and actually, this is the first step toward improving your life. When you become aware of where your own personal patterns of behavior lead you, and then modify them, your life will change. Remember: You have to be conscious of how you act. You cannot change what you are not aware of, or what you are not willing to accept.
This Principle is about discovering the patterns that underlie the areas of your life that you find less than satisfying, as well as taking the first step toward changing them in thought and action. That familiar sickening feeling in your stomach is an invitation to start thinking straight. Be grateful for it! When you notice a wrenching knot in your gut, it usually means something's not right. Working through this step can begin to transform your life, but only if you have the courage to dig deeper and dare to change.
However, let me caution you. Although I am recommending that you look at yourself unflinchingly and unsparingly, you have to forgive yourself for falling into patterns, even as you vow to get to the bottom of them and change the destructive ones. The solutions to your problems are often the best ones you think you have available to you at that time. No one consciously tries to come up with self-destructive, self-sabotaging behavior, but many times you are hindered by what feels like a lack of options because you have developed patterns that closed off other possibilities. Leaving patterns unexamined will only compound your problems.
In order to break your patterns, you need to find new ways of looking at the same problem. If you have trouble getting to a particular place with your car, you don't need a new car — you may just need a new map. Making a new map may require throwing out or destroying the old to avoid the temptation of falling back on it or of using it as a shortcut. Think about how you get to work each day. You once needed a map or someone to guide the way. Now, you get there without thinking about it. But what happens when your usual route is under construction and there is a detour? You need to be innovative, creative, and thoughtful in calling upon the resources available to you to find the most efficient path to your destination.
Think of yourself as both the driver and the car in your life. Occasionally, the road you travel is unexpectedly bumpy or dangerous, there might be roadblocks or the road simply might not exist. Kicking the car in frustration or damning the person or job you were traveling to doesn't get you back on the road and into gear. What does get you on the right road again is adaptation to circumstances and the process of creating a new map. What gets you what you want is your flexibility; your ability to change.
Continuing on the same course, perpetuating negative patterns no matter how unsatisfying, numbing, or even destructive they may be, occurs because it feels safe, familiar, comfortable, and convenient. No wonder it's so hard to change!
Can a Leopard Really Change Its Spots?
What should you know about change? What is it?
The dictionary describes change as: 1. to make different. 2. to exchange for something else. The synonyms for change are: alter, modify, transform, vary.
Perhaps you've wondered: Is anyone really helped by the self-help industry, or are the forces of genetics and the circumstances of one's life too strong for any person to radically change? Certainly, for all the self-help material around for so many decades, all too many people continue to lead lives full of yearning and, sometimes, searing desperation.
It's important to recognize that there are certain qualities about you that are permanent and unchanging. You cannot, no matter how disciplined or determined you are, for instance, change your race or parentage or cultural heritage. Increasing evidence suggests that temperaments are set at a very early age and that this fundamental part of your being accompanies you throughout life. But this doesn't mean that being shy or extroverted when you're young cannot be modified to help you get what you want later in life.
Change is definitely possible, despite centuries of the dominant idea that life is predetermined, wholly defined by forces beyond your control, and outside of you. You are not merely created, but also a creator, and your biggest creation is yourself. I know this is true because I've been able to change my life in radical ways by using the strategies in this book. I have heard stories of success and failure that have further convinced me of how a clear mind and a determined outlook can change nearly anyone for the better. A few years after writing that letter to my friend, my life and work improved drastically. I'm involved in the most fulfilling relationship of my life with a wonderful woman. I have a successful weight-loss counseling business. And I have never been happier with the way I look and feel.
But some kinds of change are clearly and more easily possible. I've collected an enormous amount of evidence to support my belief that you can alter your life's course. There are some very specific and highly useful methods that give you the opportunity to achieve what you set out to do, within your own limitations, but beyond your expectations. Psychologist David C. McClelland, formerly at Harvard and Wesleyan and now based at Boston University, specializes in the study of human motivation. His views have evolved from the basic Freudian idea that motivation and personality are formed early in childhood and never change, to the contrasting view that human motivation can be modified in adulthood.
McClelland devised an achievement/motivation training course that took as its starting point this assumption: If you are taught to think, talk, and act like a high achiever, then you will actually achieve more. He began this course in India, using untrained businessmen as his model group. He found that the trainees he worked with were more likely to engage in subsequent entrepreneurial activity than nontrainees. In other words, his thesis about motivation was correct.
Recurring Events, Patterns, and Familiarities
Psychologists tell us that we establish patterns of coping, succeeding, and failing early in life. The relationships you had with your parents when you were a child largely determine how you relate to the world for the rest of your life. If you're not conscious of how these relationships work as an adult, you continue to act and react the same ways, whether or not your actions get you what you want. For example, a child who's physically or verbally abused by a parent may simply block out the experience as a way of dealing with pain. For a child with limited coping capabilities, this may be the most adaptive strategy available. But if denial becomes an ingrained pattern, the inner abused child is still controlling the actions and reactions of the adult, who may not recognize other available strategies. In some cases, the common solution for deadening pain in childhood, like living in denial, may itself become the problem later in life.
What happens?
One complication of denying unpleasant situations and not confronting problems or crises is that you stay stuck in the past. I recently counseled a woman with a weight problem. Betty ate compulsively whenever she was frustrated or depressed. She'd tried many diets, and would often end up blaming herself for not losing weight and keeping it off. More frequently, she'd blame the diet.
When I met with Betty, she told me that she couldn't "dwell on" why she overate — she simply wanted to lose the weight quickly. She said, "Just give me a simple diet to follow — that's all I need." That's actually the last thing Betty needed to lose weight effectively and permanently. She already knew almost everything about healthy eating. First, Betty needed to understand why she ate when she was depressed and frustrated, and who or what she blamed for her being overweight.
Awareness of your patterns, and what causes them to perpetuate, is a crucial first step to changing. You are the author of your own life — you are the creator of your patterns — therefore you can change them. Life patterns have a funny way of creating a momentum that is difficult to alter. You need to take control of your patterns, and not let your patterns control you. Betty needed to find out why she was choosing to be overweight.
You are what you choose to be.
Betty was making a choice to be fat. She was choosing food over her desire to look better and live a healthier lifestyle.
Patterns and What They Mean to You
What do I mean by pattern of behavior? Let me begin with a definition. The dictionary says a pattern is: 1. a mode of behavior regarded as characteristic of persons or things, or 2. an original or model considered for or deserving of imitation. As conscious, creative beings, we experience both.
We're all creatures of what I call patterns. From waking up to getting dressed to simply talking to a friend, we've learned to do things a certain way. You may not even be aware of, for example, how you get dressed in the morning. Do you put on your shirt first? Or your socks? Where did you learn to do this? If you were told to change the order of which item of clothing you put on first or last, you could. But before you switch from automatic to the optional setting, you have to become aware of what you do without thinking. To permanently change you might need a reminder every morning, such as a note on your closet door, until the new system becomes a pattern.
Not every aspect of life needs to be examined and held up to scrutiny. It is useful to do some of life's more mundane tasks, such as getting dressed, somewhat automatically and without too much thought. But what if it became clear that your way of getting dressed was causing you problems? Or, a more likely example, what if you discovered that your diet was causing you profound health problems? People who experience this report having to learn how to eat all over again; hardly an easy task for an adult to undertake. But when it is a matter of survival (seven major diseases are caused by being overweight), many people are able to change fundamental aspects of their behavior.
Your negative psychological patterns are much more complex and insidious than mundane patterns such as how we eat cereal, put on socks, or carve a chicken. Patterns are a series of interconnected decision-making processes, the result of how your mind frames your experiences, usually formed in early childhood. Your patterns of loving and choosing partners are almost always influenced by your family relationships. Your ambitions and professional desires are often affected by your school experiences or how people reacted to your efforts in childhood.
Which patterns keep you from moving ahead? The following anecdotes illustrate the six most common undermining patterns and how to understand them. Do you recognize yourself in any of these?
• Finding someone/something to blame
• Self-sabotaging and self-paralyzing behavior
• Bad choices compounded by denial
• Always seeking the shortcut and the path of least resistance
• Choosing to be overweight
• Substance abuse
Which one(s) most relate to who you are?
The Blame Game
Of all the negative patterns I've seen in people and experienced personally, none is more common and unproductive than blaming others (or events/money/timing, etc.) for our failures and disappointments in life. We may think, "Well, if I can avoid getting mixed up with that person again, then I'll be happy/win/get the promotion I deserve/find love. ..."
What's blaming about? It makes us feel better — and gives us an out — but this solution is only temporary. What blaming really does is blind us to the root of our problems, making us feel more helpless in the long run.
Gary is an example of a blamer who is confused about the kind of choices he can make — and remember, Gary does have choices.
When he was fresh out of college, Gary decided to start his own business. He'd worked at an auto body shop through school and figured he knew enough about the business to open his own place. He had the desire and the smarts, but not the capital. He needed someone to help finance the business. He met Jake, who expressed genuine interest in Gary's venture. He arranged a meeting with Jake, who had the qualities Gary was looking for: money and the personality for this kind of business — which meant Jake was outgoing and socially at ease, unlike Gary.
Jake showed up an hour late for their first meeting. In fact, Jake showed up late for every meeting Gary set up. He always seemed to forget, or would lose, Gary's telephone number. When they got down to business, Jake boasted about how good he was at avoiding collection agents. Despite these worrisome signs, Gary still liked (or needed) Jake and decided they'd make the perfect team. He simply convinced himself it would all work out. "I think Jake will work out well enough," Gary told himself. "I'm sure Jake will be an excellent complement to the business, and besides, I need him to get the financial backing for the business. I'll let the other stuff slide."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Breaking the Pattern"
by .
Copyright © 2005 Charles Platkin.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
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