Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
Every vicious cycle can be broken if we interrupt the pattern.
Before I go into detail about how to interrupt the pattern, let’s first understand what
a vicious cycle is.
A vicious cycle happens when you are going through a period of lack of motivation, lack
of organisation, and of paralysing laziness.
On the psychological side, your thoughts become repetitive.
It is as if some sort of obsession takes over your brain.
You exclusively think about one unpleasant thing, evens if you know it is clearly harming
you.
And when someone tries to talk to you about something else, you are not receptive to that
because your mind is still playing over and over that same message that is hurting you.
There are different events that can be the initial trigger of the vicious cycle.
For example, a political decision you do not agree with, being shaken about your pet’s
passing, finding out you have been betrayed by someone you loved or being unfairly fired
from your job.
Those are just some examples.
What all of these examples have in common is a negative, undesired event that has happened.
The situation shocked you at that moment… but even after several days, you keep on thinking
about it repeatedly, and continue to feel negative emotions.
These emotions affect you so strongly that it becomes really difficult to do simple,
daily tasks such as clean the house, exercise, study or have pleasant conversations with
the people in your life.
Even if you do not want to be in a negative state, you have a hard time trying to get
out of that negative state.
A vicious cycle is different from clinical depression, which needs to be diagnosed and
treated by a health professional.
A vicious cycle is a temporary phase that has a natural end.
It can take a while, but you will eventually return to a more productive and positive mindset.
So, if this is a temporary phase, what is the problem?
The problem is feeling as if you have wasted all those days where you were inside the negative
cycle without being productive, not enjoying life or taking care of yourself.
That is why it is helpful to find out ways to get out of a vicious cycle as fast as possible.
You will now learn the pattern interruption technique.
With this simple technique, you will be able to get out of the negative phase more easily,
without wasting too much time feeling worthless.
Do you understand the practical advantage of mastering this technique?
It is like having a button in your brain that can get you back in control whenever you start
deviating from your goals.
When you learn how to break a vicious cycle, you can regain focus whenever you need to.
Imagine how your life would be when you develop this ability.
How does it sound?
This is what we are going to learn now.
Your life will always have both positive and negative phases.
This is why you need to learn the fastest way out of the negative phases.
Try to remember a positive phase in your life.
During a positive phase, you eat well, you sleep well, you read books, exercise, maintain
good relationships and have a good performance at work.
Everything seems to be going well, until something bad happens.
A new manager at your workplace lays out pointless rules.
The political party you despise comes into power and the country seems to be doomed.
A knee injury stops you from exercising.
The investment you have just made plummets and you lose a large amount of money.
Your pet gets run over by a car when crossing the road.
Whatever the initial event is, it causes you to enter a negative phase.
When something bad happens in our life, you may enter a vicious cycle.
Since you do not exercise anymore, you lose your motivation to eat well.
As a result, you do not feel like reading either.
You watch tv until late at night.
This affects your sleep and you lose focus during the day, performing worse at work…
That is why this is called a cycle.
One thing leads to another.
And suddenly your life is a mess.
You lose your motivation.
You know pretty well that you should change things up, but you have a hard time doing
so.
Days and weeks pass by and you still have an inner conflict.
On the one hand, you would like things to be different.
On the other hand, you do not have the motivation to change.
These bad periods happen to everyone.
Life is cyclic.
No one goes through life without problems.
That is why it makes no logical sense to try to avoid problems or unwanted events that
could trigger a bad phase.
Sooner or later, problems will appear inevitably.
So it is wise to get ourselves out of the negative cycles as fast as possible.
The best way to quickly break a vicious cycle is by using the pattern interruption technique.
Since bad phases are unavoidable, we are going to learn something that will help you get
out of the negative cycles quicker.
This is called the pattern interruption technique.
Interrupting the pattern will not substitute therapy nor will it solve all your problems
overnight.
But, interrupting the pattern helps you to clearly see that you are in a vicious cycle
and that it can be changed.
Interrupting the pattern means that you can do something in the opposite direction of
the things you are doing at the moment.
For example, in a vicious cycle, you may be doing some negative tasks such as sleeping
poorly, eating unhealthily, procrastinating, not cleaning your house… or exceeding the
amount of time you spend in front of your tv, videogames or social networks.
These negative actions feed on one another, trapping you in a negative pattern.
So, in order to break the vicious cycle, you have to interrupt one of those patterns and
do something radically opposite, even if you do not feel like it.
I will give you an example of someone who is completely unmotivated and has done nothing
right for weeks.
This person’s life is a mess and you can see it in their house.
It has been days since they did the dishes and the floors are dirty.
Then, suddenly this person decides to break the cycle.
They could start going to the gym again, reading books again, and trying to sleep better.
But instead, they simply decide to do the dishes, and that interrupts the pattern.
The same way one negative action leads to another, all it takes is one positive action
to break a vicious cycle.
In this example, by doing a small task like washing the dishes, we are interrupting the
pattern of the vicious cycle.
If we pay attention to the dishes, being a hundred percent focused, we can start to break
the cycle.
There is no point in doing the dishes while your thoughts keep on repeating the messages
that make you a prisoner of the vicious cycle.
You need to be present, to focus.
If you need help with full presence, you can watch episode 160 from the Hello!
Seiiti Arata series where we talk about mindfulness.
[https://arata.se/hello160]
When you realise that you have done something positive, despite it being as simple as washing
the dishes, you can then take the next step.
Now, you clean the house.
An organised house makes you want to organise your emails.
Which makes you motivated to restart an old job.
But in order to be focused at work, you need to sleep better.
And by sleeping better, you have more energy to start exercising again, which leads you
to eat better…
A simple pattern interrupt can make you get out of a negative phase without having to
waste days or even weeks trapped in a vicious cycle.
The only barrier you need to overcome is the lack of motivation to do that tiny task.
When we are in a vicious cycle, small tasks like doing the dishes can seem challenging.
This is why you need to interrupt the pattern in the easiest way you can.
Choose one small thing that will break your negative behavioural pattern and do that thing,
even if you do not feel like doing it at that time.
The secret to interrupting the pattern is this: take action even with zero motivation.
You do not need motivation to take action.
What you need is action, so you can have motivacion.
If you are able to take action, you can get out of this paralysis.
And you need to act even without motivation.
You can do something simple like doing the dishes or going for a walk.
Turn off autopilot and start moving.
This small positive action feeds another one, and then you begin to regain the motivation
you used to have.
Do not sit and wait for motivation to show up in order to take action.
Instead, take action now, simple as that.
This is how motivation happens.
Interrupting the pattern flips the expected order of things.
Instead of having motivation to take action, you take action in order to create motivation.
And if you think you always need motivation first in order to then take action, think
again.
You already do things everyday without motivation.
You do not need to be inspired to brush your teeth, change clothes or have lunch.
You just do it.
So you can also simply decide to do something completely opposite to the cyclic behaviour
pattern.
Even though it is a small task, it will interrupt the negative cycle.
This is a difficult attitude to take but, once you set it in motion, it will tend to
stay in motion.
Celebrate your small actions.
Your happiness is built by small blocks of joy.
Remember to celebrate your small actions.
You can even reward yourself for acting in a positive way.
We used to think of happiness as this huge thing that happens when we accomplish incredible
goals in life.
But positive psychology proved that this generic and constant happiness is not what happens
in real life.
Actually, happiness is built by small blocks of joy, the small things in life.
When you are in a vicious cycle, your mental state sees only negativity everywhere.
So that is why celebrating the small wins and being happy for taking action is an important
part of the pattern interruption technique.
By doing this, you combine both the rational and the emotional side of your brain.
After all, even during a vicious cycle, your rational side always knows what you should
be doing.
The problem is that the emotional side is so negative that even though it knows what
you have to do, it ends up not doing it.
This is the reason why it is so important to reward yourself for the small victories.
By being happy for every little step, you begin to put the small blocks together and
they create a bigger feeling of happiness.
This will allow you to take bigger steps, stepping up your actions until you are back
in your best productivity and positive state of mind.
We all have ups and downs.
But you can intentionally manipulate your actions so that the negative phases last the
least amount of time possible, meaning you can quickly return to a better mental state.
To do that, you need to interrupt the negativity pattern.
You need to do something completely opposite to the behavioral patterns you have during
a bad phase.
This small action will put you in motion and bring you motivation which should be celebrated
as a small victory.
The combination of those small victories will put you back into the state of productivity
and happiness you deserve.
Arata Academy is inviting you to learn more about the Happiness course.
With this online course, you will learn several techniques that are proven by positive psychology
which will help you stay in a positive mindset for as long as possible, avoiding the vicious
cycles.
You can participate in the Happiness project right now.
Just access the link https://arata.se/happiness