Recovering from Sissy Conditioning
Part of staying alive and staying healthy is the ability to plan for the future. So our brains and bodies are always looking for patterns and actions that can be done more automatically, so we have the mental space for things that are more important. It’s like when you start to search for something online and you get suggestions, your brain tries to give you suggestions based on things you’ve done in the past, things you’ve acted on in the past. The fact that old thoughts come up doesn’t have to mean anything.
Those old thoughts and feelings go away as you stop acting on them. They’re just like auto-complete suggestions on your phone, they’re based on what you’ve done previously. When you start to do new things, when you start to make new habits and successfully navigate old temptations, you won’t even be tempted anymore. But just like autocomplete there’s not a function for ‘get rid of all sissy stuff’ in your brain, you need to choose differently for each case that comes up. And one at a time your old habits are replaced by responses that empower you to more easily have an enjoyable, healthy, full life.
And it’s a bit like you’re gardening and pulling out weeds. When you tend to your garden a bit every day, you never get to the point where it’s overgrown with thorny weeds. When you have good habits of mind you can spend more time relaxing in the sun. Because when you make good choices you make good habits. And when you make good habits your life gets easier. Decide that you want to think carefully about what will be good AND enjoyable for you, when the old residue of the past comes up. Because you want to get to a place where you’ve tended your garden wisely and can now enjoy the fruits.