Back in 2011, I conducted a study with 250+ people. I surveyed their lifestyle and attributed each person to a part of their lives with the habits they have. The results were shocking. People had been processing their recent ill health, career, relationships changes for years.
So, what you are doing now, your habits today, will affect you tomorrow, next week, next year and even over the next decade.
The psychological and social clutter you collect on the way is what forms into intentions and further into habits you feel disqualified to alter or quit.
Most people create habits on autopilot. They’re totally unqualified to answer why they create a habit they never wanted to be a part of them.
The simplicity of this question and the complexity of its answer stunned me!
Most habits are formed to simplify the work. Most habits are formed to make our lives simpler.
But, if that’s so, why do people have these bad habits?
First of all, there’s one more question. What do I mean when I say “make life simpler”?
I mean to say, habits are the subordinate categories of actions that are automated by our subconscious so that we can be free from obstructions to work towards our basic intentions.
And intentions are very important part of the learning too!
What do you call an intention?
“I want to make $1000 a month” is not an intention.
Sentences like these are just goals. Intentions are the subconscious goals you set with your feelings and mental nature.
So, your intentions might be a completion to a sentence like “I want to make $1000 every month because..”
It can be positive or negative.
“I want to make $1000 per month because no one really likes me and I want to show them that I’m as important as they are!”
“I want to make $1000 per month because that would help me buy material to paint my next best painting!”
Your intentions change with your feelings. The ultimate reason you’re doing or not doing something is an intention and your habits are formed out of that effort.
Every habit is a support to your intentions.
So, if you want to stick to a habit, you should primarily work on changing your intentions.
If you’re smoking too much, you MUST find out the ultimate intentions behind it.
It could be that eventually, the intention was ignored and the habit was simply an automation to never let some particular feeling appear on the surface.
So, here’s what you can do to consciously change habits you dislike and create new habits that are in alignment with your new intentions.
1. Take an exercise book and every day, whenever you have time, write down when the habit is being triggered and what is the time, place, situation when the urge happens.
2. Observe yourself continuously. Don’t just take action right away. Try and understand the enemy lines first.
The eventual reason we’re observing is so that we can better understand our intentions.
As you go deeper, things will begin to link themselves in your mind. You will know what’s happening when and also why.
Meditate, if you need to. Close your eyes and just keep thinking over and over again and try and figure out the intention behind that habit.
Most reasons are psychological and social carvings that remained unfulfilled and some egoistic part of you triggered a sequence of actions that you’re suffering now.
3. If there’s a new habit you would like to form against an old one, take a small step. Take the step so small that you might not even notice it in your day.
Do it continuously. Your subconscious is busy recording every new and old sequence.
If you need to get rid of an old habit, make sure you decrease its frequency. If you are having 10 cigarettes a day, don’t just try to pull out 5 of them instantly. It might even create depression.
Go so slow that your body’s neural automation doesn’t even notice you’re hacking into its automation.
Start by decreasing just 1. Then, once you are okay with it, decrease one more.
I call this “isolated generation sequence technique”. You are generating an all new sequence that will help you take total control over your brain.
This isn’t willpower. You are not resisting to your desires here.
But, it is equally important to take an inventory of your habits. Because, then and only then you’ll know how small or big you need to make change. But then again, I think you’ll have to make a many discoveries in between. Be ready for that!
Try this method out with any of your bad habits and tell me how it works out.
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Jaky Astik is the creator of Habitual Winning Pro Course that helps you change habits, stop procrastinating and create powerful mental patterns for habitual winning.
– Consider some areas in your life that you may need to dig down and identify the intention behind. What are your thoughts on the ideas above? Share in the comments below.