How to cook a frog sucessfully
Changing any of our current habits is a daring attempt which is prone to failure due to the hidden blocks. If we don’t have appropriate strategies to deal with these blocks, our attempts will fail, in the short term or long term. The frog story brings out this concept.
A person wanted to cook a frog for a meal. He dropped it into a pot of boiling water. The frog felt the sudden shock of heat, panicked and jumped out of sight before he could do anything. He thought for a while and got a brilliant idea. He put the second frog in a pot of normal tap water. It was swimming happily. He then placed the pan over the stove and turned on the lowest flame. The water was getting warm very slowly. The frog did not feel any threat, just a pleasant warmth. Its metabolism was adjusting to the warmth. He continued increasing the temperature a little at a time. The frog did not panic. After a long time, the temperature crossed the upper limit for the metabolism of the frog to function. Its heart stopped functioning. It died without realizing what was going on. The person enjoyed the meal with the nicely cooked frog. Of course, a story!
Our current set of habits is like that frog. Our attempts to change them is like cooking that frog. If our current habits sense our attempt to change them, they will escape the change by creating some very smart and apparently valid excuses against the change. Our strategy should be like that clever person in the story.
We need to practice small changes irregularly, instead of attempting major change or practice regularly. This will soften the resistance and panic towards the change in status quo. We repeat these small changes gradually over many days, weeks or months. The new practices will get integrated with our established habits. They get practiced automatically without even us thinking about them. That was how the current habits got established! At that stage, intensify the new practices a little more. Gradually add a few more small changes.
Keep on repeating this clever pattern till the old habits are changed to the desired degree or totally changed.
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