Healthy Habits

When you take a permissive pattern and increase the shoulds by putting rules on it, you can actually start to lose the urge to do it. Especially if your unconscious mind feels that those rules are not ‘on its side’.

I call this the ‘rule hack’ and it works wonders for unfriending those pesky habits you’ve had a love/hate relationship with.

The rule hack is often a method used by hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners to help clients quit smoking. The get the client to agree to only smoke according to certain rules. A common example is to get the client to agree that each time they smoke a cigarette, they must hold it between their pinkie and ring finger.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a huge change to the pattern, but when the smoker actually complies with this new rule, it no longer feels the same. Its not just the physically awkward sensation, but also the emotional change that breaks the pattern of permission.

Most therapists who use the rule hack don’t usually teach the client any growth mindset hacks. So what typically happens soon after is that the need to depressurise becomes transferred onto another habit. Especially a habit with similar associations and patterns. A habit, say for example, that also involves placing something into the mouth for comfort during break times.

So perhaps now its starting to make more sense why people tend to get hooked on comfort food and put on a bit of weight after they quit smoking and times of stress. Consciously, they just think its their appetite that’s increased. But comfort eating is when you crave the sensation of feeling full even when you’re not especially hungry. Your unconscious is trying to depressurise by medicating the irritable feelings that cigarettes used to.

How long would it take for the pattern to become unstuck? It depends how addicted you are. It depends how strictly you stick with the rules; it also depends on how much your unconscious mind feels that those rules are ‘on your side’ or not. But generally speaking, we can only maintain rules on an otherwise permissive pattern for a few days, weeks or months at best. Eventually our need to depressurise will see us lose the desire to ‘stick with it’ and start seeking permission elsewhere. If we hit one of life hurdles and go through a particularly stressful time, then the need to depressurise increases. So our ability to ‘stick to the rules’ falls apart even faster.

If you want to learn how to trick your mind into getting healthy, creating better eating habits, a healthier diet and more motivation to exercise this book is for you. This really is the first diet and nutrition book that looks at mental health, the only book currently digging deep on down into the psychology of bad, unwanted and unhealthy habits.