Interestingly enough, Jenny and Erin have decided to have a contest on their blog for all the tagged bloggers. The contest (as I see it), is basically to see which of us can best answer the following question:
How big of a role do habits play in your daily life? Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?
So, if I may, I’ll answer the question one part at a time.
How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?
I think this is a loaded question, because habits play a HUGE role in everyone’ lives. Show me a person without habits, and I’ll show you a person who has to read a driving manual each and every day before even getting behind the wheel.
Habits are a necessary outcome to the way our brains function. Without habits, life would be nothing more than a constant mess of signals all competing for our attention. As far as habits in MY life, I strive to develop good habits, as I’m sure we all do deep down.
I have been working on developing the habits that form the basics of Lucid Dreaming. I am not yet where I’d like to be as far as the frequency of my lucid dreams. My ultimate goal is to be able to have a lucid dream each and every time I go to sleep, if I so choose.
My deep belief in the power of building habits out of the basics is why I wrote the posts that are listed as “The Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar. If you haven’t yet read those, I recommend it. It will change your life. Promise.
Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?
Both. Habits are ALWAYS being formed unconsciously. We do, however, have the option of forming habits consciously as well. Great care must be taken in forming habits, that we forming habits that will empower us to live the lives we choose. A great deal about habits has been written on some of the excellent Personal Development Blogs on the original list at Priscilla’s blog.
What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?
There are several. For the past 5 or 6 years, off and on, I have been learning as much as I can teach myself about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. To me, NLP is a promising technology and an awesome tool. I totally fell off the bandwagon for the past couple years. I finally decided to get back into it more more hot and heavy, and am now re-reading “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins. As far as specific tools to develop and shape habits, one NLP Pattern I’m particularly fond of is the “Swish Pattern”. This is an awesome tool because it takes a bad habit, and simultaneously replaces it with a more empowering habit. Two Birds, One Stone.
Another tool I’ve come into contact with lately is the NLP Pattern called the “New Behavior Generator”.
If you are open to developing great and empowering habits in record time, I recommend you read the following sites for NLP Information.
Well, I guess that about covers it
This is probably one of the most exciting posts I’ve put on this blog to date!
When I wrote about doing Deep Trance Modeling in a Lucid Dream, it was just an idea I wanted to try out. Well, I am proud to say that I’ve done it and it works! At least for me…..
So, here’s the good stuff. A couple weeks ago, I had come home from work at 3am. I piddled on my computer for about 2 hours or so, then went to sleep for a nap. I woke up to have lunch and decided to head back to sleep for about one and a half hours before work. I realized that since I’d already slept enough for at least 2 good deep delta
sleeps, I would have a good chance of having a lucid dream.
So, I lay down, and I decided to try to induce a lucid dream with the WILD technique. I picked a woman that I wanted to use as my first test of “manifesting a dream character”. For now, I’ll have to keep her nameless as she has no idea that I’ve done this yet. I simply focused on the idea of her as I fell asleep, with the intention of seeing her in a dream.
Well, I sensed the initial onset of hypnagogia, and next thing I know, I am in a pub the likes of what I’ve seen in Scotland. The bar was made of the dark heavy oak that is stained and finished. I walked a few feet, there were several people in the room. My friend isn’t in the room, so I decided to try out the technique that Scott Lee mentioned of intending a person to be behind you, and then turning around. IT WORKED!
So, as soon as she sees me, she walks up to me and starts groping me and kissing me. I am already lucid at this point, and remember my previous intention to try out Deep Trance Modeling next time I’m in a lucid dream. I pushed her away and said “Stop. This isn’t the real you. Now, I fully intend that you will become as close to the real-life version of XXX as my mind can reasonably muster up, based on everything I know about her. IS THAT CLEAR?”
I am pretty assertive with the dream character, and as soon as I made that demand of her, she transformed from this supersexed person into a regular person. I swear, it was like an instant transformation. She is now standing there completely like the real person saying “yes, I understand you. What am I doing here?”
I reply, “Well….” and proceed to ask her a bunch of questions, with the intention of gaining a deeper insight into her as a person. She answered the questions in great detail. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put a notebook by me and forgot the questions and answers:(
Interestingly enough, there were a few questions that her reply was, “I can’t answer that question because you don’t have the answer in your mind.”
I challenge you to give this strategy a shot and let me know in comments how it goes.
p.s.
As I am sitting here writing this post for you, I realized that this strategy could likely be easily modified to incorporate the “New Behavior Generator Strategy“.