Breaking the habit, tonight !!!

By M.Farouk Radwan, MSc.

Are you haunted by a bad habit?

Do you have a habit that has been haunting you since years?
Do you suffer from an inner-self conflict because you were unable to quit that habit?
Do you feel pain each time you repeat doing that habit again?
Have you tried every possible method to quit smoking or over-eating but yet failed?
Do you think that you can’t resist the bad habit?

How to break your bad habits

Most of us have suffered from a certain habit through our lives, whether this habit was lying , letting go of our rights, wasting time, over eating, smoking, internet addiction or even drug abuse.
We have all done our best to stop it, we have all felt the pain of the emotions that arises from doing what we don’t want to do, but yet, very few of us have succeeded, do you know why?

...Because we have never thought of the following:

If you think that you can break a habit using will-power only, then you are wrong.
Here's the story of Sam, an iron-willed guy who decided to quit smoking. The first day passed, the second day passed and still he resisted the urge to smoke a cigarette. He started to feel happy and confident.
Time passed, until one day, he had a car accident. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt, but the damage to his car cost him $200. On that day, Sam returned back to smoking...

Will-power is not constant

But why? ... Wasn’t Sam iron-willed? ... Yes he was, but his will-power was not constant. It changes with time, it changes with life circumstances and it changes with the ups and downs in our lives.
When you are happy, your will-power becomes strong, but when you get disappointed it decreases and becomes weak. When you're at the top of your achievements your will-power may be an iron one, but when you hit the bottom, your will-power gets down to the minimum level.

So, returning to Sam, what could he have done? Not that hard to guess. He should have taken the decision to quit smoking on a very bad day. He should have chosen a day where his will-power was at its bottom instead of choosing one of the best days in his life to start quitting. If he succeeded to quit while being at his lowest level of will-power, then any other day would be much easier for him because his will-power will be much stronger.

Bad habits and external dependency

Sam tried to run away from his problems by smoking, he didn’t want to face his real feelings and he just ran away. He ran away to cigarettes because he couldn’t stand it by himself. Sam had an external dependency. He depended on smoking to lift his mood.

You too must know if you have any kind of external dependency that is preventing you from breaking your habit. Don’t run away, if you want to escape, then go ahead, but escape forward instead of backwards.

Bad habits and false beliefs

Unfortunately, the end of the story was much worse. Sam started to think that he was weak; he couldn’t quit and started to look back at his history with this habit and he found that he failed to quit smoking more than ten times so he just gave up trying again. He gave up because he had built a false belief. A belief that is composed of two words: “I can’t”. Who knows, maybe if he had tried just another time, it would have been the successful try.

Even after breakups, the main reason some people fail to recover for years is that they have false beliefs associated with breakups, in my book How to get over anyone in few days i described how can beliefs like "There is only one soul mate out there for me" or "The one concept" hinder recovery completely and make people suffer. Whether its a bad habit or a breakup, getting over any of them requires getting rid of the false beliefs you have in your mind.

Bad habits and will-power misuse

Another factor is will-power misuse. Will-power should be channeled to the correct destination instead of being wasted somewhere else. Will-power misuse is like trying to break through a wall instead of opening the door using the knob. An example of will power misuse is when you suddenly become very enthusiastic then run to do a certain task until you get bored. To channel your will-power correctly, write down a plan when you are enthusiastic instead of quitting a habit for three days then returning back from where you started.

Bad habits and learned helplessness

When you were born you didn’t know how to become helpless, but as you progressed through life and as you experienced a failure after a failure, you learned a new skill, the skill of becoming helpless!!!

Learned helplessness concept was proven by laboratory experiment made on dogs, it was proven that someone could learn how to become helpless towards doing a task or breaking a habit by just failing to do the task many times. The good news is that as soon as you learn how to become helpless by practicing helplessness, you could unlearn this acquired skill by not practicing it. If you felt for a moment that there is no hope in quitting this habit just say “NOO, I wont fall a prey to learned helplessness, I wasn’t born helpless”. (see Learned helplessness for more information on this topic)

Breaking habits and inner-self conflict

Sometimes you might not be able to break a habit because a part of you wants it. Yes, you may want to stop smoking because of the health risks associated with smoking but on the other hand another part of you wants you to smoke in order to enjoy the cigarette. In this case ignoring the need of one of your parts will result in suppressed emotions and unmet needs which will in turn lead to feeling uncomfortable and so you will eventually return back to the bad habit.

In this case you need a method to resolve this inner conflict. There is a an NLP technique that was specially designed for resolving inner conflicts which is called Parts Integration Technique. Visit this link for full information on parts integration technique.

Bad habits and trying something new

Finally, if you haven’t tried anything addictive yet, then don't. Never try it. Lots of people imagine that trying everything provides them with necessary experience, but they're just doing that in order to compensate for their lack of knowledge or self-confidence.

Trying something makes the fear of "Trying" flies away. Usually we all have some fear regarding trying something new. This fear acts as a protection mechanism that prevents us from trying dangerous things, so don’t break through the first defense line not to leave your non-constant will-power take charge. Never break your first line of defense(fear of "Trying"). Trying cigarettes will make trying weed much easier and trying weed will make trying drugs much easier and so on.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor it’s a boring online encyclopedia but it’s a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is presented in a simple and obvious way. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with you was released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

Did that help?

No, i managed to quit for a few monthes, then i returned back to doing the bad habit!!

No, I need more specific details on quitting smoking

Nooooo, I tried a countless number of times, maybe 1000 times, there's no way I could quit!!

Somehow, but tell me more about external dependency

I guess I have acquired a fake belief. Tell me how to get rid of it

Somehow, tell me more about will power misuse?

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