Articles

As children, when our basic needs of love and connectedness are met there is great beauty and innocence in play. There is a pure outlet of energy that is unhampered by societal stigmas and rules. With loving guidance and boundaries from a child’s parents or guardians in conjunction with the child’s own developmental leaps and overcoming of various challenges, a child develops optimally.

As adults, it appears that we are faced with an ever growing, complex array of obstacles and life challenges. Our responses to these challenges are explicit to the core of our nature. Over time we become the product of an accumulation of these life responses shaping our very being. Our ability to change in the face of our familiar responses requires a degree of adaptability. At a neurological level, the capacity to deviate from the familiar pattern of response is referred to as the plasticity of our brains. Certain neural pathways are firing in our brains in a reinforced manner to set up a familiar response to situations that we associate as being comparable to previous circumstances that we then respond to, or most commonly react to, accordingly. So, to change the pattern of our familiar responses to certain events, it would appear creates a challenge; to break the groove of an accustomed response, in favor of a more preferable response.

What is needed to motivate change? Change requires seeing the value in it. Is it worth it? How much energy is required to expend on doing it differently? That depends on how much resistance there is to a more favourable path.

Author: David Kalmar

Psychologist