Let’s pretend you wanted form a habit. And not just some wimpy habit, but a major, mind controlling, and life changing habit behavior. Where do you start to make it a really strong habit that will feel impossible to break? There are three basic ways we learn habits; emotions, authority figures, and repetition.
An example will help explain this.
Now, let’s pick a person for our example. How about you when you were 10-14 years old. And for this example, let’s use the habit of smoking.
While in that age range, we’ll assume you were learning about life and how you fit in it. You may not have felt as sure about yourself as you would later in life.
Maybe you felt self-conscious, dependent on others, powerless, not good enough, or something like these. We’ll refer to this as feeling “bad”. Now, this does not necessarily mean you felt miserable, but did you feel as “good” as you wanted to feel? Did you feel as “good” as you believed other people felt?
Feeling like that would lead you to wanting to feel better, or, as good as everyone else. What ways does your mind see to do this?? That matters upon what learning situations you’ve been exposed to.
Maybe you had authority figures in your young life that smoked, like parents, relatives, friends, advertisements, role models. At this point in your life, smoking would have been seen as tough, strong, independent, self-assured, unique, “good”. Repetitively exposed to the thing you felt your life lacked.
This would create a desire (craving) in you to do this thing. A belief that smoking is what your life is missing. And not just in a “knowing” way, but a “feeling” way as well, which is much more powerful.
Eventually you smoked your first cigarette, and DID feel better, sort of. You weren’t too good at smoking the first time. You had to practice to get good at it. And you did.
As life continues you come across situations that make you feel “bad” again and do what you’ve been taught makes you feel “good”. That is repeated emotions and practice and you have a strong habit.
A lot of people working to quit smoking have thought of these things. A lot have not. But, all of the people that have tried to quit smoking have used a lot of time thinking and analyzing their habit. Trying to argue themselves into quitting. But, you didn’t learn this habit by thinking and analyzing. Why would trying to quit smoking that way work?
It is a lot easier to quit smoking with the same methods you started smoking with. A “hypnotized” state of mind combined with emotions, authority figures and repetition. Often called modern hypnosis.
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