Our minds follow patterns and use short cuts all the time. Otherwise we’d have to re-learn what doors and other things were each time we encountered one. And we’d have to go back to our text books to find out how grammar worked every time we spoke. Which, on second thought, could be useful for some people online but that’s another discussion entirely.

Pattern interrupts help us reboot our mind when we need to.

In much the same way as Windows needs rebooting to clear the junk out of its storage that’s been left lying around by programs like Firefox that habitually leak into its memory as well as other processes that should have ended but are still running. Our minds do the same thing.

Usually “what if” questions for all sorts of possible outcomes that could happen but almost certainly won’t.

You can use pattern interrupts on yourself or other people.

So if someone always asks you how you are today and you almost always answer something like “I’m good, how are you”, you can change that response however you like.

Play with that thought.

In your mind – which will interrupt the normal way you think about it – and in real life.

Any response out of the ordinary will twist how the other person’s mind reacts.

Try it.

I’m not going to give you a stock alternative answer.

Figure one out for yourself.

And if you can’t do that easily, maybe that’s the first habit or pattern you’re running that you could usefully break.

It’s nowhere near as difficult to do this as it is to give up some other habits.

The way you answer things isn’t laced with nicotine or alcohol or narcotics.

It’s just how your brain gets you to answer before your mind has chance to say something different.

You can use a pattern interrupt anywhere you want.

Music does it when it changes key.

Films do it when they run flashbacks.

You can do it on your own mind by just asking the question “why” enough times until you get to the root cause of whatever is causing you to be stuck in your ways.

It’s a great way to get over the deer in headlights mode we so often go into when we encounter something new.

What if scenarios run through our minds like wildfire.

We question whether or not other people will like what we’ve done. Some will, some won’t, most probably won’t have a view either way or won’t even notice we’ve done something.

New haircuts are one of those cases – so often, we don’t notice them.

The person with the new haircut does, obviously.

And because they’ve spent more time than they’d care to admit in the hairdresser they expect us to notice as well.

But most of us are too busy running our own “what if” questions to pay much attention. Which keeps more than a handful of marriage guidance counsellors in business amongst other things.

So if you’re in the habit of not noticing that kind of detail, maybe it’s time to interrupt that pattern.

Force yourself to stop and think – even if it’s only for a fraction of a second – and react.

Then figure out how you can employ it in the things you do online.

Not in the cheesy 70s adverts method of “Sex… now I’ve got your attention”. Because that never really did work.

But maybe by changing how people perceive things.

A salesman telling the truth and exposing the warts along with the benefits of a product works well.

It interrupts the pattern we expect.

It also causes our minds to question whether the salesman is in it for themselves or really wants to help us.

Which is why some of the best salesmen in the world don’t really appear to sell.

That knocks our built-in anti-sales defence mechanism,

It interrrupts the pattern we run that says everyone trying to sell us something is automatically only looking after their own best interests, not ours.

It’s worth working out how to use pattern interrupts on both ourselves and other people.

As mentioned earlier, asking “why” is probably the easiest way to run an interrupt on yourself.

If you want to get rid of a big stumbling block, chip away at the edges first.

So if creating a YouTube video is an issue for you, start with the built-in slide show option on YouTube and add some of their royalty free music as a backing track.

You can keep it private if you want.

But it will have taken you a step closer to putting videos on YouTube regularly.

Repeat the process enough times and your previous fears and worries will begin to melt away.

Be a bully with the things that are holding you back in your internet marketing – pick on the smallest, least significant, bits of your worry first.

Because there’s a cumulative effect that works a bit like Jenga or that Bucking Bronco toy you had as a child.

Most of the bits you play with have no real effect either way.

Then – often quite suddenly – everything changes.

That’s the same with chipping away at the patterns you want to interrupt.

Allow yourself to have fun with this – there are no right or wrong ways to do it and the mere thought of changing something could be enough to do it.

If you’ve got any thoughts or ideas on this, please add them in the comments section below.