Here's a super simplified neuroscience lesson about how we create real lasting change at the brain deep-level.
I like to use the metaphor of roads to describe how our brains change to create new habits, thoughts, and ways of behaving. These neuropathways develop over the course of our lifetimes through repeated use.
Think of super established patterns of behaviors (like how I used to complain to get what I wanted, for example) as superhighways. Easy and quick to take.
Behaviors we have done some, but not much, are like dirt roads, harder to travel, slower to arrive.
New patterns that we want to establish (such as, for me years ago, learning to ASK for what I wanted in an open vulnerable way) are like virgin woods. The only way through is to bushwhack.
When faced with an option of going one route or the other, our brain will always want to take the fastest, most well-trodden, most well-maintained route: the superhighway.
It won’t even consider bushwhacking a whole new path.
Or it will want to turn back and find that bigger road before it exhausts itself bushwhacking…
The good news is, we can insist on carving out that new pathway; we can choose to NOT give up, even if it feels easier, even when it’s uncomfortable.
The amazing thing is the next time you walk this same path it gets easier and faster, becoming like a dirt path, then a paved two lane road.
Eventually the thing you’re trying to change just becomes the most automatic natural route—the New Superhighway to exactly where you want to go.
Second nature. Totally natural, easy and comfortable.