The Most Powerful Technique For Change: The Interrupt Mantra

I Was Starting To Feel Like A Robot.

After being alive for 22 years so many of my reactions were automatic, as if the result of programming over time. Even my thoughts were automatic.

Someone insults me, I become angry and brood over it. A girl that I think is cute stands near me, I immediately become self conscious. I worry about things I can’t control even though I know it does nothing to help, I become anxious.

I would spiral into my thoughts without ever taking a moment to question whether these feelings and thoughts really represented me, or if they were just auto-pilot responses.

Your Brain Wants To Conserve Energy.

Do you ever look out the window on a rainy day? At first the rain goes anywhere, but it quickly starts to form paths and the rest of the water follows down those paths. It’s easier to travel where it has already been, it follows the path of least resistance.

Your brain is the same way. If you have encountered a situation before, you’re brain will recognize it and go on auto-pilot, reacting the same way it did in the past. It will associate this situation with the situations before it and follow protocol.

*Beep Boop* Attractive member of opposite sex is nearby. Initiate low self-esteem thought pattern. *Beep Boop*

But I was tired of doing what I had always done, I was only getting what I had always got.

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”
-Albert Einstein

Seeing Things As They Are.

I wanted out of the endless loops and auto-pilot reactions. I wanted to take control of my life again.

I had to consciously choose to see everything with fresh eyes. I needed to decide at every moment if my thoughts were serving me, or harming me.

“The mind: A beautiful servant, a dangerous master.”
-OSHO

Many of the qualities that I didn’t want were being inflated by these auto-pilot reactions.

Once I started seeing everything for what it was and not allowing these automatic thought patterns take over, I realized that I had not respecting myself.

I was allowing myself to become angry over nothing, to worry about nothing, to feel unworthy over nothing. My automatic reactions were always negative.

I needed to change the way I reacted to things. I needed to interrupt these automatic negative thoughts and replace them with my own, more useful, positive thoughts.

The Interrupt Mantra.

This is a resourceful technique that I have taught to many people with great success.

Once you have identified a negative automatic thought pattern—maybe you get lost in thoughts of being unworthy, angry or depressed—you have to come up with an interrupt mantra that combats it.

If you have problems with anger your interrupt mantra might read something like this: “I am a calm person, I value my happiness over all else and I will not let outside events control me.”

When a situation arises that sends you into the auto-pilot response of getting angry, you interrupt those thoughts with your interrupt mantra. Repeat your mantra as many times as you need to until you pull yourself out.

At first the interrupt mantra will just serve as a way to stop yourself from spiraling into your negative thoughts, but after enough practice your new way of thinking will be your brains first reaction. It will be the path most taken, and will thus become the automatic response.

Try creating an interrupt mantra that suits your needs.

A couple examples:

ANGER: “I am a calm person, I value my happiness over all else and I will not let outside events control me.”

CONFIDENCE: “Being confident is not the absence of nerves, but carrying on despite them. I am confident that I can handle any situation that comes my way, even if it makes me nervous initially.”

ANXIETY: “It is useless to worry about things that I can not control. I am calm and I trust that everything will work out. Even if I worry sometimes, I will not let my worries beat me.”

SADNESS: “I am a strong person. I have been sad before and I have made it out alive. I can’t be defeated by sadness and I won’t allow it to take over.”

These interrupt mantras can be the first step in changing the way you react to the situations you face in life. It will feel a little unnatural to say them at first, you might not believe the words that are coming out of your mouth, but keep repeating them.

Keep interrupting the negative auto-pilot responses and keep reaching towards something better for yourself. You don’t deserve to be angry, sad, anxious, lonely, jealous, or anything that you don’t want to be.

You can change the way you think, but it won’t be easy.

See things the way they are, decide what you want them to be, and use your interrupt mantra to move towards that goal.

The rain on your windowsill doesn’t automatically have to be a sad sight.
It can be whatever you want it to be.

DAILY AUTOMATIC PROGRESS

I’m not going to lie…

I’m lazy by nature. Left unchecked, I would never get anything done. I always had trouble handing in assignments at school, and I always look for corners to cut.

In recent years I have become very ambitious, which mixes with my lazy attitude like oil and water. I’ve learned that most people are lazy to some extent. It is human nature to want to experience the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain.

I have often created vast plans for achieving my goals, but they would only work in a fantasy reality. I imagine myself turning into some sort of robot overnight that can work twenty-four hours a day without eating, sleeping, or needing to relax.
But these plans never stand the test of time.

Eventually I give up, and feel ashamed.

Does the progression towards your goals have to be this hard all the time?
No, and I think I’ve figured it out.

Daily Automatic Developmental Habits

This is something that fellow HelpfulGuy Leroy Milton and I discuss quite a lot with each other and with the new year starting, we want to really delve into how to internalize these habits and which habits to pursue.

A daily automatic developmental habit is something you do every day that guarantees you will get closer to your dreams.

Unlike baseline habits—sleep, diet and exercise—these automatic developmental habits focus more on accomplishing repetitive tasks that support you in accomplishing your goals.

I’ll use myself as an example.

My dream is to become an expert in the field of personal development. I want to write books, engage in the self help community, coach people one-on-one, give speeches and learn as much as I can in my field.

The daily automatic developmental habits that I enact to support this vision are:

• Writing one page of content
• Reading for a minimum of thirty minutes while taking notes
• Engaging with someone in the community
• Sharing a 2HelpfulGuys article
• Coming up with ten ideas

Now, unless you have the memory of a goldfish you will be thinking to yourself “Wait, I thought he said he was lazy and took the easy way. That doesn’t sound easy to me.”

Well it can be, if you have the right approach.

Making Your Habits Automatic

In recent years the scientific community has discovered that your willpower is like a muscle, and you can only exert it so much before it needs time to recover.

When you first start trying to incorporate a new habit into your routine, it takes up a lot of your willpower.

After daily practice of your new habit for a period of time—some say twenty-one days, but I’ve also heard up to forty-five—your habit will cease to take up nearly as much willpower. This means that you won’t have to convince yourself to do it, it will just be natural.

This is where I always went wrong. This is why I found it so hard to get anything done.

I tried to incorporate too many habits at a time and didn’t internalize any of them.

Setting up your daily automatic developmental habits will be a long process, but I prefer long and stable over frustrating and short-lived.

No matter what you want to do with your life pick three daily habits that would guarantee you’d inch closer to your goals, and give yourself a month and a half to internalize each individually before incorporating the next.

After internalizing each habit they will become second nature to you, and you will be automatically progressing towards your goal every single day.

Live Like The Tortoise, Not The Hare

It is important that you become completely content with the idea of the long term, and taking it one step at a time. This is the only way to end up with automatic habits that transform your productivity.

Remember, I promised you automatic, not quick.

I love experimenting with different daily habits and seeing how they can improve my life.

It has taken me almost two years to get my habits in place and I’m still working on them, which is fine. Maybe I wouldn’t become a robot even if I could, because then I would cease to improve.

I’d rather be slow and stable, than to go Gung-ho and burn out before I get anywhere.

But this could all just be an excuse to take the long way around because, well…

I am lazy.