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, yet failed?
Do you think that you can’t?
Most of us have suffered from a certain habit through our lives, whether this habit was lying or letting go of our rights, wasting time or 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 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 what’s below:
If you think that you can break a habit using will power alone, then you are wrong.
Here's the story of Sam, an iron-willed guy who decided to stop 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...
But why?.... Wasn’t Sam iron-willed? Yes he was, but will power is 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 will be strong but when you are disappointed it will become weak. When you're at the top of your achievements your will power may be an iron one, but when you hit your bottom, your will power will reach its minimum level.
So, returning to Sam, what could he have done? Not that hard to guess. He should have taken his decision to quit smoking on a very bad day. He should have chosen a day where his will power is at its bottom, instead of choosing one of the best days in his life to start quitting. If he did succeed 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.
Sam tried to run away from his problems by smoking, he didn’t want to face his real feelings - he just ran away. He ran away to a cigarette, because he couldn’t stand it by himself; Sam had an external dependency. He was dependent on smoking to lift his mood.
You too must know if you have any kind of external dependency that is causing you to continue embracing a habit, and unless you eliminate that dependency, you wont be able to stop nor break your habit.
Don’t run away, if you want to escape... then escape; but escape forwards instead of backwards.
Unfortunately, the end of the story was much worse.
Sam started to think that he was weak, and that he couldn’t quit, and started to look back at his history to find that he has failed to quit smoking more than ten times; so he just gave up trying again. He gave up because he has built a fake belief, a belief that is composed of two words: “I can’t”. Who knows, maybe if he tried again only once, this would be the one.
Another factor is will-power misuse. Will-power should be channelled 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 getting very enthusiastic one day then running to do a certain task until you get bored and lose your enthusiasm. 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 again to where you started from.
When you were born you didn’t knew yet how to become helpless yet but as you progressed through life and as you experienced a failure towards a failure you learned that 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 towards breaking a habit by just failing to do the task many times. The good news is that just as you learned 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”.
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 so to in order to compensate for their lack of knowledge or self confidence, and that’s wrong.
Trying something makes the fear of trying fly away. Usually we all have some fear regarding trying something new, this fear is some a protection mechanism that God gave us, so don’t break the wall of fear of trying, and leave your non-constant will power in charge. Never break your first line of defense... Fear of trying. Trying cigarettes will make trying weed much easier, trying weed will make trying drugs much easier, and so on. Each step you go down, makes something worse more accessible and closer to you.
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