Personal Power II: The Driving Force (Success Journal 4)

Day 4

To change your life you must change your neuro-associations. Three things
must be in place for you to make these changes and count on them to last. They
are the three fundamentals of NAC:


1. Get leverage on yourself. To do this, three levels of responsibility are
necessary-you must decide the following:
A. Something must change.
B. I must change it.
C. I can change it.


2. Interrupt your current pattern of association. You must scramble
the old pattern of thinking and feeling; this is best done by using
something unusual, such as making a radical change in what you say or
how you move your body.


3. Condition a new, empowering association. Install a new choice, and
reinforce it until it is conditioned. Any thought, emotion or behavior
that is consistently reinforced will become a habit (a conditioned
pattern). Link pleasure to your new choice. Reward yourself
emotionally for even small progress, and find yourself developing new
patterns quickly.


YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
For each of the four actions you listed yesterday, do the following:


1. Get leverage:
Write down 10 reasons why you must change that
behavior now; then list all the reasons why you know you can do it.


2. Interrupt your own pattern: Design four or five ways to get yourself out
of the limiting association—and do them!


3. Condition yourself by rehearsing your new behavior. Give yourself a
sense of accomplishment and exhilaration, pride, or joy each time you
do this. Do it consistently and rapidly until each time you think of this
new pattern you feel good automatically.

Here is a bizarre, outrageous, and effective way to get leverage and break

your pattern:

Get a weigh-loss buddy and promise him or her and a

group of other friends that you will begin a strict

regimen of healthy foods and enjoyable exercise.

Further commit to them that if you break your promise,

you will eat a whole can of Alpo dog food.

The woman who shared this with me told me that she and her friend kept

their cans in plain view at all times (no pun intended!) to remind them of

their commitments. When they started to feel hunger pangs or considered

skipping exercise, they’d pick up the can and read the label. Such

appetizing ingredients as “horsemeat chunks” helped them achieve their

goals without a hitch!

1. Ten reasons why I must change now, and why I know I can do it:

2. Four or five ways to get myself out of the limiting associations:

“The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”