Patterns of People: How to Control and Interrupt Them
One of the greatest influences on my life — and, largely, my reason for writing this book — is Tony Robbins. I would highly recommend his audiotape series Personal Power I and II and Personal Training Systems. I hope to be as inspirational and motivating as him in helping people make positive changes toward bettering their lives.
Everyone has patterns — physiological patterns (their posture and the way they carry themselves), patterns of focus (what they tend to focus on most), and patterns of language (what language they use to describe themselves and the world and people around them, with both internal and external linguistics). These patterns, once understood, can be controlled and used to exponentially increase the success and quality of your life. Lack of understanding these patterns can be harmful and actually control your life without you even being aware of it. You come to think that your destructive patterns are just “normal” and that’s the way you’ve always been.
An example of a negative pattern is when a person is depressed and sad or angry and frustrated, he or she will tend to go in a cycle between depressed/sad and angry/frustrated. People will go back and forth between these two feelings because people need variety and control. They get tired of feeling a certain way (especially when it’s a negative or destructive emotion), so they decide to mix it up. This cycling between emotions gives the person a sense of control. This destructive cycle can continue for as long as the individual will let it. Most people will bounce back and forth between these destructive emotions a couple times until something changes their focus. Depending on the situation and the person, they could fall back to bouncing between those two emotional states at any time if the internal story they continue to play in their mind is on repeat.
When a person feels sad or depressed this gives him or her a sense of connection to his- or herself. However, sadness eventually makes you feel weak, lonely, and drained of joy and passion. When you’re so miserable you can’t feel joy, passion, or love, and you’re tired of being sad or depressed, you’ll change your emotion from sadness or depression to anger and frustration. This gives you variety, a change of state, and allows you to feel in control. Channeling your energy to feeling angry and mad, however, gives you only a momentary sense of strength and protection, which ultimately causes a sense of disconnection and more loneliness. People hate feeling out of control, especially when they are in a weak state brought on by negative emotions. So, to make sure you are still in control, you will return to your feelings of sadness and depression to give yourself a momentary sense of connection with yourself and maybe get some sympathy from friends and others. Even in our destructive states, we try to fill our needs. This is why you have to be very careful and aware of how you allow yourself to fulfill your needs through your patterns.
When people are in a sad or depressed state, their physiological pattern is typically slouched shoulders, head down, unsmiling, etc. A sad or depressed person’s pattern of focus is on the negative, and their pattern of language is typically negative, destructive self-talk, whether internal or external, complaining about a situation or event that’s taken place. When a person is happy and confident, their physiological pattern, or posture, is typically a straight spine, chest and shoulders up and back, head up, not down, smiling, etc. Their pattern of focus is on the positive, and their pattern of language is typically positive, motivating, and passionate. By being aware of these patterns you’ll recognize when you or someone else is feeling a certain way, or wanting to feel a certain way. By changing your physiology, focus and language, you can determine the way you will feel. If you allow yourself to hold your body in a specific way, focus and talk in a specific way, you will feel a specific way as a result. If you help people change their patterns you can change their state or the way they feel.
This comes in handy. I’m sure you’ve been in a situation where you wish you could’ve made yourself feel differently or made someone else feel differently. The next time someone is sad, you should be able to tell by the person’s patterns. If you help him or her change patterns, it will change their overall state, and you will help them not be sad. If you or someone else needs to be inspired and confident before a presentation or a competition, simply replicate the patterns of a confident person. Match the physiology, focus, and language of a confident person. Stand confidently, remember a time you felt your most confident or happy and focus on that to get the feeling. Then tell yourself you’re intelligent, confident, amazing, and can achieve anything you desire and commit to. If you commit to changing the patterns, it becomes very hard to feel any way other than how you want yourself to feel. When you control your patterns, you control your emotions and your life.
Have you ever watched a movie where someone is rambling on because their emotions have taken over? Then someone either slaps them or throws water on their face. All of a sudden the rambling stops. For a brief moment, the person’s pattern has been interrupted.
Another way to interrupt a person’s patterns is through the use of powerful language. Tony Robbins does this a lot in his seminars. He will use powerful language to grab his audience’s attention and increase the intensity of the message he is trying to convey. He is a master of awareness when it comes to people and their patterns.
If you have destructive patterns that you allow yourself to repeatedly fall into, try finding new patterns that give you the same results but with positive benefits. If smoking or drinking helps you relax, try meditating, deep breathing, or anything else that can help you relax and that won’t have any negative effects on your health and your life. If you eat unhealthy foods when you feel depressed, try finding healthier foods that can give you a similar feeling of fulfillment. Don’t let your destructive patterns control you. Figure out what patterns you fall into on a daily or weekly basis, and decide whether they are destructive or constructive. Do your patterns help you grow and better your health and life? Or do your patterns have negative effects on your health, relationships, and overall life? You must become more aware of your patterns and what you allow yourself to do.
The most important thing with regard to these patterns is just a higher level of awareness. Practice increasing your awareness of these patterns — your patterns and those of the people around you — and you will obtain control of your life like never before.
Random Fact
A person’s stomach lining is replaced every few days.
