Ten years ago, I was a prisoner of my own destructive habits – today, I design my life one conscious choice at a time.
Have you ever wondered why your life is not improving – yet you are still engaging in the same habits you were 10 years ago?
In fact, you might be worse off than 10 years ago despite the constant desire to improve and change.
Humans are habitual animals. Habits create you until you create new habits! Your daily actions and interactions are driven by habits. The vast majority are unconscious habits originating in early childhood.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. – Carl Jung
Impact of your habits:
Habits can have both a positive and a negative impact on your life. The effect many areas of your life:
- Your health
- Your confidence
- Your self worth
- Your wealth
- Your relationship
Habits can make or break you. Depending on what kind of habits you engage with consciously.
Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.
James Clear
The challenge: Bad habits offer instant pleasure while creating long term pain whereas good habits require short term discomfort while offering delayed gratification.
How often have you tried breaking a bad habit or implementing a good habit only to fall back into old behaviors shortly after?
To make things worse, every time you fail, you dig yourself a deeper hole. You enforce the belief that you have no power over your habits.
It is a vicious circle, pushing you deeper into blame, dependency and a victim mentality.
The most common reason why people fail to change their behaviors and create better habits is that they are simply not aware they are engaging in bad habits.
Five Reasons you fail to break bad habits.
- Insufficient motivation : the habits has not caused enough pain
- Victim Mindset: When you blame the habits, you give away your power, making the habit more powerful than it really is.
- Emptiness: The only way to end a habit is by creating a new one. If you don’t replace an old habit with a new one you create emptiness
- Lack of rewards: the brain needs immediate incentives to learn and sustain a new behavior
- Lack of tracking: without visually tracking, it’s easy to lose oversight of the process
Changing habits is easier than you think. The problem is: you need to understand the power of the subconscious mind and how to create the right principles and structure to make it easy and enticing.
Another huge misunderstanding that you may have: You think if you beat yourself up over engaging with bad habits you create enough leverage to stop it. This is a paradox – it is a trap.
The truth is: The more you beat yourself up, the more reason you give your brain to engage in the bad habit.
Gratitude on the other hand is a powerful healer. When you find gratitude for your previous lifestyle choices, you find meaning and purpose. The habits lose their power. You are able to let go of the victim mentality.
The 3 keys to change a bad habits are:
- Awareness
- Desire
- Strategy
First you need to become aware of the habits you want to change. Without awareness, change is not possible.
Then you need a burning desire. You create enough leverage when you clearly understand your reasons and your purpose.
Last, you need a strategy. A strategy will do two things:
- Eliminate the most common reason why people fail to change
- Create a structure that makes is easy and enticing to change
Changing your identity:
Ending bad habits and creating new habits is not only about the actions you take – it is about the identity you adapt.
Your whole life depends on patterns. Who you become is greatly shaped by these patterns. When you become aware of the patterns, you can take full control over your mind, your character and your life.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
When I was addicted to opiate painkillers, smoking weed every day and constantly seeking short term pleasure, my identity was:
I am a drug addict, I am a pot head, I am a failure! I will never change.
My habits were enforcing these beliefs – but my beliefs were also enforcing the behavior.
Breathwork and Ayahuasca made me challenge my beliefs and helped me create a new identity. Through breathwork, I was able to access deeper parts of my subconscious mind, finding the root cause and eliminate it.
In order to change, it is crucial to not only change your behavior. E.g. Additions of any form are just symptoms. The root causes are deep within your subconscious mind. They are on the deepest level of your identity.
Trying to stop the symptoms without finding the root cause will not offer long term benefits. In fact, once a bad habit returns, it will emerge stronger.
You know the saying: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The same is true to bad habits. Every attempt to end a habit that doesn’t kill it will reinforce it. it will come back stronger.
Conclusion:
Changing any habits is within your power. You can do it and you can do it now. Even small, seemingly insignificant habits can have a huge impact on who you will be in 10 years.
You fail to change because you haven’t hit rock bottom, you don’t take responsibility, your life is empty, you are missing a reward system and you are not tracking the progress because you are not serious enough to make a change.
Plus: You are holding on to a false identity. A false set of beliefs of who you are.
But if you make a commitment and implant empowering habits while letting go of self-destructive habits you will experience a greater freedom than you ever have in your life.
Changing habits is not difficult, the process is simple. What is difficult is making the commitment, taking the first step in the right direction and holding yourself accountable.
Time is your enemy. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.
Act now! Take responsibility and reclaim your power.
Commit to eliminating one habit and implementing one new habit. No matter how big or small. In fact, the smaller you start, the easier it will be.
If you are curious to learn how breathwork can support you in the process, join one of my free upcoming breathwork sessions by replying to this email.
Are you ready to let go of your past and reclaim your power? Work work with me 1-1
