Meet Kevin. Kevin is the guy who loses his shit when you cut him off in traffic. He yells, he pounds on the steering wheel, he flips you off. Then he races into the next lane and cuts you off just to let you know who’s boss. Kevin is the guy at work that people try to avoid because even the smallest misstep can set him off. Kevin is guy who throws his remote control at the television when the ref makes a bad call, he’s the guy who belittles the server because his iced tea wasn’t refilled as quickly as he’d have liked, he’s the guy who yells at the Little League coach because Kevin Jr. didn’t get enough playing time. In short, Kevin is a jerk. But the thing is, Kevin doesn’t want to be a jerk. He didn’t grow up thinking, “I’m going to be the angriest guy in the world!” The truth is, he has no idea why he’s so angry all the time. In fact, after his outbursts, he quietly chastises himself and promises that that will absolutely be the last time that he loses his temper. And it is. At least until the next person cuts him off in traffic.
Meet Judith. Judith desperately wants to fall in love and raise a family. She dreams of the perfect home with the white picket fence and 2.5 kids. Judith just turned 40 and she’s starting to panic. She’s afraid that maybe she missed the window and her perfect life is slipping out of reach. And the worst part is that it’s not for lack of trying. Judith has no trouble meeting men. She’s had more dates than the Mayan calendar. But it just never seems to work out. It’s just never the “right” guy. Her friends tell her she’s sabotaging herself. Judith thinks that’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. Clearly the problem isn’t with her. She just doesn’t have any luck when it comes to meeting men.
The good news for Kevin and Judith is that all is not lost. They are suffering from something we call the silent ghost in the machine. Their Inner Matrix is not aligned with the person that they want to be. Remember, your Inner Matrix is your unique set of emotion and thought patterns that drive your choices, decisions and actions. Those choices, decisions and actions ultimately define every aspect of your life. Kevin wasn’t born an angry person. No one is. Rather, Kevin was conditioned, likely by childhood experiences, to react to certain circumstances in a certain way. His emotional response to those circumstances then drives the choices and decisions he makes and the actions he takes. Most of the time he’s not even aware of it. He’s not really mad at the guy who cut him on in traffic. Instead, the mere act of getting cut off hits a nerve with Kevin. It triggers an emotional response that was programmed into his Inner Matrix at an early age. Maybe he was always picked last for the kickball team, or the school bully always cut in front of him in the lunch line, or maybe he just witnessed his parents reacting in similar ways to similar circumstances. In the end, the “why” doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Kevin can learn to recognize when those emotions are present, he can understand where they’re coming from, and he can train his nervous system to have a different emotional response. He can reconfigure his Inner Matrix to produce new emotions that will, in turn, drive different choices, decisions and actions. Ones that don’t involve throwing objects across the living room.
Similarly, in her search for the perfect relationship, Judith has been at the mercy of an Inner Matrix that was programmed to set her up for failure. For any number of reasons, at an emotional level, Judith believes she is unworthy of being loved. No matter how badly she wants it, Judith denies herself that love connection because she doesn’t believe she deserves it. Her friends have been right all along. Judith has been sabotaging herself and she didn’t even know it! But like Kevin, Judith can reprogram her emotional responses, so that rather than experiencing feelings of shame or unworthiness when starting a new relationship, she can feel joy and fulfillment.
There are emotional impulses that drive our behaviors, and if we don’t know how to reprogram those impulses, then we’re not going to be able to change the behaviors. When we reprogram the emotional patterns in the nervous system, we no longer have to “will” ourselves to behave differently. Rather, the emotional drivers are no longer there and we are able to align our actions with the results we want to get, and do it effortlessly. We can’t think our way out of emotions. We have to retrain them. This is what we tackle at Inner Matrix Evolution. We retrain those emotional patterns directly so that we can step out of them very easily and access a new emotion. We discover those unconscious emotional patterns that are driving our behavior but we don’t even know are there. Those ghosts in the machine. At Evolution we bring those emotional patterns that are anchored deep in the subconscious up to the surface. We retrain them so that they’re no longer driving you. And we evolve them into new drivers that will get you the results you want.
If you think you might be a Kevin or a Judith, or if you just feel like your behaviors don’t align with the person you want to be, join us for IM Evolution. Click HERE to book a call with a Care Advisor to get more information and book your spot now!