Mental blockages – how to recognize and dissolve them

Mental patterns

Man is a creature of habit. This applies to daily routines in professional and private life as well as to our thinking. Habitually we think in certain ways. Our experiences and experiences have shaped patterns of interpretation with the help of which we interpret events. Mental patterns are habits of thinking and these, in turn, trigger a certain behavior: If I have positive thoughts about a person or situation, I behave differently than if my thinking is more negative or critical. Also in groups, departments and whole organizations collective patterns develop, which convey the message: “This is how it works here…”.

Thinking controls behavior

So behavior is always the result of the inner attitude. Sustainable changes in behavior can only be achieved by changing mental patterns. Behavioral conditioning in the form of reward and punishment systems regularly fail due to already pronounced thinking habits. On the other hand, a change in thinking and attitude always leads to a change in behavior.

Mental Blockades

Some thought patterns are so firmly established that an alternative thought model exceeds the imagination. The questioning of the previous point of view alone is perceived as so threatening that it cannot be considered in principle. Mental blockades trigger blocking behavior: Depending on the situation and environment, this can include retreat, sabotage, passivity, defamation and much more.

Reducing Certainty to Overcome Mental Blockades 

In order to overcome mental blockades, it is essential to stimulate the imagination, i.e. to develop imagination and learn to think beyond existing frameworks.

All instruments of organizational development for overcoming mental blockades in organizations, therefore, have one thing in common: a deliberate irritation of thinking arises, a confusion about previous thought patterns. Exactly this confusion is necessary in order to reduce the certainty of one’s own patterns of thinking and interpretation and thus to trigger the inner motive for the self-renewal of thinking as a motive for learning. The stimulation of the imagination provides the necessary inspiration that is urgently needed for the renewal of thinking.

Behavior is always a consequence of the inner attitude. The human posture has its causes in thinking, so it sits in the human mind. Thus we also speak of “attitudes of mind” and “attitudes” that we adopt. Our thought patterns and thought blockades therefore play tricks on us and, in the worst case, ensure that we find ourselves in self-created negative thought cycles. That means stagnation, lack of innovation and creativity! Thinking-out-of-the-box is always necessary when old thought patterns no longer work and the existing and previously successful framework of thought is increasingly failing.

Mental patterns – what is that?

Mental patterns – also thought patterns – are thinking habits. We get used to how we think about ourselves and this or that in the world. We enter into “thinking routines” and adopt attitudes and beliefs towards ourselves, towards others and towards the world. Here our experiences and experiences influence us in a special way and shape our thinking and interpreting considerably.

If, for example, we have had bad, hurtful experiences, they shape our emotions and attitudes and influence our thinking about the people, circumstances or situations that we associate with the experience. In order to “digest” the experience, we try to understand it. We explain the experience through patterns of interpretation. These patterns of interpretation shape our thinking. If an experience is repeated, our memory reminds us of the earlier patterns of interpretation – our patterns of thinking and interpretation return to us.

In personal life as well as in collective group thinking – i.e. in departments, companies, organizations – such patterns of interpretation and thought establish themselves through communication and thus occupy a place in the historical memory of the individual and the organization. “This is what we do here…” or “We have always seen it that way with us…” are formulations that shape patterns of thought and interpretation (mental patterns).

Mental patterns are thinking habits. Thinking habits trigger human behavior and are subject to an attitude. For example, if we are pessimistic, we are most likely to wait or reject. If we find an optimistic attitude, we expect the good. And it goes even further; depending on our inner expectations, we seek confirmation of what we expect. It is also possible that we may hide other facts and only perceive (positive or negative) what we expected from the beginning.

Management and employee behavior are therefore always the result of (mental) attitudes and attitudes. If behavioral changes of people in companies and organizations are desired, for example, more entrepreneurial action, cost awareness, goal, and result orientation, better cooperation, customer orientation, etc., then it is necessary to create the necessary mental prerequisites (preconditions for thinking).

Very often it can be observed that the attempt to sustainably correct behavior, for example through reward or punishment, fails miserably. In such a case, the person will also sometimes take recourse to admonition or warning in order to bring about a change in behavior. Since behavior is, in the long run, a consequence of the attitude, each attempt of the behavior conditioning reaches too briefly and comes to an attempted “training” equal. One cures at the symptom, not at the cause. If, on the other hand, it is possible to successfully change mental patterns, i.e. attitudes, a change in behavior is an automatic consequence. You can save yourself the futile trouble of trying to condition behavior.