I recently shared a meme that walks the reader through a simple scenario that occurs every time a person brings their vehicle to a stop at a traffic light.

The point of the meme was to illustrate the role that fear plays in motivating a driver to move their foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal.

It’s obvious that unless the driver brakes, they’ll either plow into the stationary car in front of them or into oncoming traffic, but what’s less obvious is that experienced drivers aren’t thinking through every step of the braking process, they’re just doing it – the same way they’ve been doing it every time they pull up to a red light.

There’s a term to describe processes that have been mastered to such a degree that we can perform them without consciously thinking about what we’re doing or how we’re doing it. We call these Behavioural Loop Patterns or B-Loops (a term that I coined in 2015).

Millions of behavioural loop patterns are learned within the first few years of a person’s life:

Lying on one’s stomach and lifting one’s head;

Turning over onto your stomach;

Lifting yourself onto your knees;

Using the bathroom;

Eating with a spoon;

Looking a person in the eyes when they’re talking to you (unless this is discouraged in the culture);

Looking away from someone who’s expressing anger toward you;

Pleading with a parent for more candy, attention, playtime or whatever;

The vast majority of those B-Loops will continue to define your response until your dying day.

It’s important for us to be aware of our behavioural loop patterns as adults, because they’re usually the reason why our responses to stress look a particular way:

When an adult responds to something stressful with anger or embarrassment, for example, the way that response looks was probably determined before they were two years old.

Use of blame is just as old, as is the use of criticism, ignoring, bullying, or judgment.

Most adults are not consciously in control of almost anything that they’re saying or doing or HOW they’re saying and doing it.

How scary is that!

Over the last ten years, I’ve been helping clients identify their B-Loops, because once they recognize them, they can go through the process of reprogramming these reactions and taking full control of their lives.

Much of the work I do with clients involves the identification of Behavioural Loop Patterns. THEN INTENTIONALLY REPROGRAMMING THEM!

This can be extremely powerful in situations, for example, where a person is dealing with a manager who’s not equipped to be in a management position.

I provide my clients with opportunities for examining their behavioural loop responses to feeling disempowered; to feeling resentment; and being at the mercy of someone who seems oblivious to the impact that their actions are having on members of their team.

Understanding one's native B-Loop reactions opens the door to exploring alternate responses to a manager’s managerial deficiencies, rather than being limited in one’s responses to those that were learned in infancy.

The employee often discovers that if they can observe the manager’s behaviour without becoming reactive, they have far more agency to do something about it than they had when they were powerless children.

They often discover that there are plenty of things that they can do, either on their own or together with co-workers, to influence the manager’s behaviour and that they can choose the option that seems most promising.

Reach out if you’d like to explore the way that your B-Loops sabotage your happiness and success

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