You may think, "I'm not going to watch
shorts" or "I'm not going to drink coffee," but you're watching
shorts and drinking coffee again and again? How nice would it be if you could
say, "I shouldn't do it," and then actually not do it. Is it because
you have weak willpower that you end up doing more of what you shouldn't do? Or
is it because there's something else going on? It's been shown that when you
think you shouldn't do something, the thought of not doing it stays in your
head, making it more likely that you'll act on it. So if you're constantly
thinking, "I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that," you're creating
an environment where you can't help but act on it.
So what can you do about it? Well, if
there's a habit that you want to avoid, you can do something that you can
replace it with, and one of the things that we talked about earlier is thinking
about what you can replace it with, like, "I don't want to have coffee
this evening," and you can have a warm glass of water or a decaffeinated
beverage, or you can read a book, which is a completely different activity, and
you can do that, and then you're not only practicing not having coffee in the
evening, but also you're not waking up in the middle of the night because you
didn’t have coffee, which is good for your sleep. In this way, you're doing
what you've substituted for what you shouldn't be doing, and you're getting a
lot of side benefits.
You can apply this to create good habits
that you've always wanted to create. If you've been struggling with a lot of
negative thinking, you can do something to replace it when you have a negative
thought. Instead of trying to force yourself to stop having negative thoughts,
you can just do something to replace it, like doing some light stretching or
going for a walk. This will have the effect of stopping the negative thought,
but it will also have the effect of stabilizing your psychology as it shifts to
a different expression. It won't happen right away, but if you stick with it,
you'll build your own healing power, so if you're always telling yourself
you're not going to do something, but you find yourself slipping, give this a
try.
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