Break Your Bad Habits

Having just looked at a list of bad habits posted on the internet, I can honestly say that whilst they are habitual repetitive behaviours, many of them are also disgusting! One site listed nail biting, throat clearing, lying, interrupting, chewing the end of a pen, smoking and swearing in its top 20 list of bad habits. And that’s not to mention knuckle cracking and thumb sucking. Habits are formed when a behaviour is consistently repeated. Eventually, it becomes an unconscious behaviour, that is, that you can do it without thinking about it. In just the way your unconscious controls you blinking, breathing and walking without you having to remember to make it happen, it also takes over responsibility for activating the habit. In a sense, the levels of competency goes some way to explaining how this unconscious activity is created: Unconscious Incompetence- Not knowing about it and not doing it. (Ignorant) Conscious Incompetence- Knowing what needs to be done but unable to do it, lack of skill required. Conscious Competence- Knowing what needs to be done and have to think about how to do it, in order to do it. Unconscious Competence- Knowing what you need to do, and being able to do it without consciously thinking about how it is done. We can see by looking at the levels of competency process, how a positive behaviour such as learning to drive for example, is taken through the above stages so that it shifts from a conscious activity, into an unconscious one. The problem with this process is that the unconscious mind will not distinguish between a good habit, and a bad one. When learning to drive, this is generally a beneficial habit to master, and biting your nails for example is not. However the unconscious simply responds to the programming it is given. It does make a distinction about whether it is right for you or not. The more times you repeat the behaviour, the more hard wired the behaviour becomes, good or bad. This means that in order to break a bad habit, the automatic function of it, needs to be bought back into the awareness of the conscious mind, in order to give the conscious a choice about whether to continue with the action. This could be enough for some to break their pattern, yet for other, even though when they are conscious of the habit, may continue to pursue it. For example, many people who smoke and know that they should give up, are aware of the cigarettes they light up and inhale. Worse than that, they are even conscious of what they are doing to their depleting immune system as they do it- and still they continue- why?! The answer is that they get some sort of a pay off. An opportunity to be destructive and release some tension by biting your nails, or a moment to drift off and take a break from the busyness of work when having a fag. In the great scheme of things it’s important to note that these payoffs are of course only temporary. They only alleviate pressures for a short amount of time and usually come with a down side, such as ultimately damaging your health, the way you look, the way you feel, or the way people respond to you. NLP techniques are great for helping to get “leverage” for applying pain to the unwanted problem and pleasure to the solution. Anchoring techniques can provide an instant desired state to relieve tension for example, so that it is no longer achieved from performing the habit. A Hypnotherapist can be consulted to reprogram the unconscious part of the mind, linking unsavoury feelings to the unwanted behaviour (for example feeling sick if you go to put your fingers in your mouth to bite your nails) and forming new habits to deal with stressful/ boredom situations in a new empowering way. A Hypnotherapist in Hertfordshire can help you to achieve a state of well being and to be rid of bad habits. Hypnosis works because of the clients ability to focus on the hypnotherapists voice. Hertfordshire Hypnosis teaches hypnotherapists how to use their voices to create the best level of trance possible. About the Author: Gemma Bailey is a qualified Hypnotherapist and NLP Master practitioner based in Hertfordshire. http://www.gemmabailey.co.uk Read more articles by: Gemma Bailey Article Source: www.iSnare.com Share: Del.icio.us Digg Reddit

Life Coaching Extravaganza

Life Coaching is an effective means of establishing where you are currently in your life, where you going, and how it is you will get there by focusing on specific areas- from self confidence, to enjoying your work, creating time for yourself or living your dreams. Some people find it difficult to comprehend what life coaching is about or why you would need to pay someone to guide you in this way. What you need to ask yourself is, if you were to carry on doing things as you have been them, are you going to achieve your goals? Life coaching is not about changing yourself but becoming yourself. To be successful can take much more than accepting the life that you have, it can mean that you adapt the world to suit you, to make life work for you. The more you know about who you are, the easier it will be to achieve what you want and to find what fulfils you. Life Coaching in the St Albans areas is a valuable way to redirect, or find direction in your life. I always say that life coaching is most beneficial when several areas of life need to be worked on simultaneously. Life coaching is also a really flexible way of achieving change. For example, in my practice near St Albans, I can see someone for as many or as few sessions as they need. It can be carried out over the phone or face to face. You will be provided with a Life Coaching Manual. This will ask questions and set tasks in a variety of areas in your life. Changing one thing can make a person successful, but global change creates massive success. You can work through the manual at your own speed, with or without my input. I will fit in with whatever is the right way for you. In the same way that one person sees a glass half full and another sees it half empty, some people see something that they hadn’t anticipated as a problem whilst another may see it as a challenge. In order to gain control of your life, you can take on responsibility for the things that are within your control and really work to improve them. As for the things you can not control- move on and let go. You can regain your feelings of control by looking for something positive in a situation that you had always viewed as damaging or hurtful. About the Author: For Hypnotherapy, NLP and Life coaching visit http://www.gemmabailey.co.uk Turning Point are exclusive one off sessions designed to help people overcome emotional events from the past, feelings of depression and anxieties. Details can be found at http://www.gemmabailey.co.uk/turn.htm Read more articles by: Gemma Bailey Article Source: www.iSnare.com Share: Del.icio.us Digg Reddit