It boils down to one word: Emotion.

How you feel about what you are thinking and doing always determines your behavior. If you feel good about it you will naturally embrace it. You will want to connect to it and make it a part of your reality. It will be an activity you look forward to because it gives you pleasure.

On the other hand, if you do not feel good about what you are thinking or doing you will disconnect yourself from it. You will move away from it, avoid it and even deny it rather than confront or interact with it. Our first reaction pain or potential pain is to avoid it.

Even habits, those little scripts which determine your automatic actions and reactions are based upon connecting to what feels good. Habits are usually created at some point in time because the action is pleasurable. We connected with those actions because they gave us the feeling we desired, not necessarily the outcome we desired.

This is an important distinction to make.

It explains why you will continue certain behavior even though the results may be undesirable or even painful. This happens because on some level you find the activity of the behavior pleasurable, familiar and safe. This explains why individuals with self-destructive obsessions and addictions will continue the behavior. Their connection to the pleasure far outweighs the negative ramifications of the activity.

The intellect alone does not have the persuasive power necessary to change behavior. Just because you think the behavior will cause some kind of problem is not enough to actually stop you from engaging in that behavior.

An obsessive or addict will disconnect from the reality of the negative outcome until until it results in an unalterable change to their day to day reality… which finally interrupts the continuation of the obsession or addiction.

How do you modify behavior?

I’ll address that question in my next blog posting.

-Bob Baran