Are New Year's Resolutions Fading Away?
- Jan 28, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 29, 2025
Dr. Solangel is an integrative medicine doctor with extensive experience in alchemical quantum medicine and mental upgrading. She is the founder of Dharmagaia Integrative Medicine and the creator of The Master’s Journey, a transformative online program that has helped hundreds of people.
How do we make sure they stick and become a reality? Learn how conditioning plays a significant part in creating our reality, and discover practical tips on reprogramming your mind for success.
Our baby steps and Pavlov’s dogs
At birth, our minds are like a blank canvas. While we may carry certain genetic predispositions, the potential for growth, achievement, and transformation is boundless.
Could some deeply ingrained memories stem from past lives? While this is a possibility, I won't delve into it here. My journey with hypnosis has uncovered some truly fascinating insights. Click here to explore more about it.
Our exposure to our environment and the influence of our parents or caregivers plays a pivotal role in shaping our conditioning and forming our personality.
Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, discovered conditioning by observing dogs who began to salivate at the sight of food. He repeatedly used the sound of a bell while feeding them and found that the dogs eventually salivated at the sound alone, demonstrating a conditioned response.
During childhood, much of our conditioning is shaped by reward and punishment. As infants, we rely entirely on others to meet our basic needs, and the brain quickly begins to learn behaviors that ensure survival. Punishment often feels to the child like rejection, fostering fear and a need for approval or validation. For instance, if a parent withdraws in response to a child’s behavior, the child may internalize feelings of unworthiness, distress, or abandonment, as their survival is tied to the parent’s care.
Repeated experiences of reward and punishment teach the child that vulnerability or emotional expression may result in rejection (punishment). They may suppress their emotions to avoid pain, rejection, and abandonment, and to feel accepted, validated (rewarded), and worthy. Over time, this conditioning becomes a survival strategy, shaping their emotional responses and behaviors well into adulthood.
What rings our bells?
Take withdrawn parents, for example. The child perceives a threat that conditions an emotional expression set through repetition and develops these coping mechanisms:
Suppression: Emotions like sadness, anger, love, connection, or vulnerability become linked to pain or rejection (punishment), making the child feel safer when suppressing them.
Self-sufficiency: To avoid the risk of connection and vulnerability, the child learns to emotionally self-regulate by shutting down and relying solely on themselves.
Belief formation: Core beliefs such as "Emotions are unsafe," "I should not express how I feel," or "I can only rely on myself" begin to take root.
Stress association: The body starts linking emotional expression with stress or danger, triggering the autonomic nervous system's fight, flight, or freeze response.
Hormonal imbalance: Overproduction of stress hormones like cortisol can lead to chronic hypervigilance and greater emotional numbness.
Muscle memory: Physical tension, such as stiff posture or shallow breathing, becomes part of the body’s adaptation process and starts to feel like the new normal.
A conditioned filter sabotaging our rewards?
Over time, and reinforced by repetition, the child’s consistent effort to suppress emotions becomes hardwired into their nervous system. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle where the body instinctively suppresses emotional responses before the mind is even consciously aware of them. Repeated suppression strengthens neural circuits, reinforcing emotional avoidance, disconnection, and symptoms such as stiff muscles and shallow breathing.
Classic Pavlov's conditioning
The reticular activating system (RAS) is a network of neurons in the brainstem that acts as a filter, determining what sensory information reaches conscious awareness. It plays a critical role in perception by prioritizing stimuli that align with our deepest core beliefs, unconscious emotions, and survival needs.
In this context, the RAS reinforces the child’s learned behaviors by filtering out information based on their conditioning. For example:
If a child believes "emotions are unsafe," the RAS may focus on cues that validate this belief (e.g., negative reactions from others) while ignoring evidence that emotional expression can be safe or positive (e.g., good comments from peers or positive emotions such as love or deep connection). This leads to a stronger reinforcement of beliefs such as "I am not good enough" or "No one likes me."
This selective attention strengthens neural pathways associated with suppression, further embedding these patterns into the child’s mind, body, and behavior as we mirror what we see, consolidating this “filtered” information more and more.
The repetition and reinforcement of beliefs recreated during pivotal years, whether at school or in other environments, will attract more relationships, people, and circumstances that the RAS has filtered. These will feel as comfortable and familiar as past interactions and situations.
Our learned behaviors and coping mechanisms lead us to the same experiences that are not only filtered by the RAS but also chosen by our need for self-soothing, which, for the most part, can be driven by dopamine gratification. Learn how not eating the marshmallow and the hamster wheel are related to this here.
Can we de-condition the hungry dog or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Picture this: You are invited to a party. You look sharp, have done some self-work, and have been making affirmations, but your expectations feel like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know that a few people attending the party don't necessarily like you.
You enter the room; your breath is shallow, your heart is beating fast, and you're sweating. You walk across to the bar, see a couple of heads turning to look at you, and recognize a few faces. You notice how they start talking among themselves. Their whispers are like a bell, triggering a conditioning deeper than any affirmation you could have made that day. This sets off a string of thoughts and feelings like: “Well, I don't need or like these people anyway,” “I knew I should not have come to this party,” “Here we go again,” “No one likes me,” or “I’d rather be alone.”
You see, we think around 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts daily, and 90% are based on the past. We see reality through a filter (RAS) that constantly re-projects the past into the present, unconsciously giving us a subjective interpretation that keeps triggering our conditioning and drawing us back into the same reality.
How do we choose differently when almost every decision we make is based on beliefs, learned thoughts, and subconscious emotions rooted in old conditioning and repetitive neurochemical reactions?
The conscious mind cannot outwit the subconscious mind in a given moment because of years of conditioning. The good news is that it is possible to reprogram; we can create change, BUT it needs to happen at the subconscious level, not just intellectually (affirmations) or informationally (listening to a recording).
Practical tips to dance to a new bell
1. Self-reflection
Make a conscious effort to develop self-awareness. You can start by journaling in the evenings and identifying suppressed emotions, reactions, and expectations.
2. Listen to your body
Work with your body to release stored tension and rewire the nervous system. Scan your body often and explore any areas of chronic discomfort or tension. You can start with a restorative yoga class, somatic healing, or body-centered therapies.
3. The power of vulnerability
Practice new behaviors that rebuild trust. Create safe relationships that allow emotional vulnerability. Start small by expressing your emotions, seeking support from friends and loved ones, and finding healthy ways to release your emotions.
4. Breathe
Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and take a deep breath through your nose for 4 seconds. Hold for 4 seconds, then exhale through your mouth for 6 seconds. Repeat this rhythmic breathing for about 2 minutes, focusing on the sensation of your breath. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your breathing.
5. Challenge negative thoughts
Question the validity of your self-talk. When you think negatively about your abilities or accomplishments, challenge those thoughts by asking yourself for evidence to support or refute them. Replace negative thoughts with more realistic and compassionate alternatives, focusing on your strengths and past successes.
6. Meditate
Start a short guided meditation to calm your mind, access your subconscious, and become more aware of your emotions and body.
Start changing today
If you are ready to transform your life, remove old conditioning, and set a completely new emotional imprint at the subconscious level, schedule an online appointment here.
Read more from Dr. Mariana Solangel
Dr. Mariana Solangel, Medical Doctor Transformational Expert
Dr. Solangel is an integrative medicine doctor who is a leader in biohacking. Her gift for seeing the unseen allows her to offer a unique set of techniques using the power of self-exploration, mental upgrading, and self-transformation. Her flagship program, The Master’s Journey, facilitates profound, long-term shifts that assist individuals toward their next level of wellness and personal growth.
