Separate The Bad Habit From The Intention
Is your bad habit just pure bad?
What if it had a lot of good in it too?
Most of us don’tĀ challenge the way we think because we generally agree it’s just the way we are which is a social protection mechanism and a bad habit. I bet you have heard something like this many times “you can’tĀ teach an old dog new tricks” or ” a leopard doesn’t change its spots”
This really is a big fat lie that keeps us all safe and comfortable huddled together agreeing with each other in comfortable bliss and safety but have you ever wondered why we stay stuck with a bad habit?
This is really common so please just consider this with an open mind. A major premise of NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming is that the sub-conscious mind will never do anything to harm the person and everything it does is for a positive reason.
Sometimes I talk about it in this way to help people consider it differently – I often ask smokers what do you get out of smoking and most times they say “absolutely nothing”. Point to note is smoking is the bad habit.
Then I ask thisĀ “what’s the positive intention or positive purpose of smoking?” which sometimes can take a bit of teasing out of the person and it usually includes the following –
“I get to leave the office for a quick fag” “I get to relax after a long day” “it stops me killing the kids” “It helps me feel good” so the positive purposes or intentions of the bad habit are Comfort, relaxation, safety and freedom to which the light bulb comes on and they then realise they smoke for very good reasons. So no more denial about getting absolutely nothing out of smoking.
This is a turn aroundĀ moment in the conversation realising there are positives in a bad habit. But more than that is the sense that it’s not all bad so a person can see that beating them selfĀ up doesn’t help them progress to reconsider a bad habit as something else entirely.
So without considering this turn aroundĀ this is why we can stay stuck with a bad habit because of a rigid belief of the event that created it and those circumstances.
So the point here is that by loosening up the grip on the belief and seeing the story about the bad habit in a different way can really help you start to make changes.
What would happen if you took some time to think about the positive intentions of decisions and beliefs you formed from past events rather than just accepting them as rigid stuck problems? I mean really consider why you did things and find the positive rather than the actual past event that happened only which keeps you stuck.
Deliberately look for the positive of the things you thought of as problems to redefine your relationship to past events and give yourself a different way to think about habits.
You never know you might give yourself a bit of a break and see new possibilitiesĀ and choices for progress and change because people really do change when they find a way to look at things from a new perspective that consistently works.
It’s amazing what happens when you change your relationship and story with a past event and how that can help you create new possibilities. It might even make you smile when you see a positive in there and that in itself is all it takes to start the process.
Please contact me HERE about a free 2-hour coaching session Now to consider new and better ways to change your future rather than just letting it happen.
Again thanks for blogging with me and please comment, share and like this editorial.
Marko
