Know Someone With a Crazy Unhealthy Habit? 3 Ideas for Them

It’s okay not to be 100% healthy, 100% of the time. For most of us, some of the most enjoyable things in life are a little bit unhealthy. Take eating pizza and drinking beer while watching the footy, or sipping cocktails by the pool in Bali; some of the things we enjoy are a little bit unhealthy. But the unhealthy habits some people have are just down right crazy!

I’m not going to pretend I’m perfect. I myself have unhealthy habits, starting with dessert. When it comes to dessert, my favourites are ice cream, chocolate and chips. The trigger for me is the finishing of dinner. And that’s an important association to make — what triggers your behaviour. Whether your habit is what I would consider as quite normal, like mine, or just a tad crazy, like I’ll explain, recognising your trigger is all so important.

"This is all about putting the mindset shift ahead of the physical shift. And this is the way it should be."

I’m used to hearing of unhealthy habits people say they want to stop, or can’t stop. Habits like eating take-away, drinking soft drinks or smoking. These are what I would consider to be fairly ‘normal’ unhealthy habits. The people who have these habits know they’re unhealthy.

But the unhealthy habits I just can’t get my head around are the ones in which people actually believe they are choosing a healthier alternative. I speak of diet soft drinks, low-fat food or accumulating enough exercise equipment to run their own small training business that never actually gets used.

Whatever your unhealthy habit, here are 3 ways to modify them.

3 Ideas for Someone With a Crazy Unhealthy Habit

1. A like to dislike script
   This is a process whereby you think of something you like (i.e. diet soft drink) but wish you didn’t (NB. wishing you didn’t like it is key to this strategy) and then think of something similar but that you absolutely dislike. It’s even better if you hate it! For each, you envision a picture paying particular attention to what you see, hear and feel. You then change the sub-modalities for for what you see, hear and feel for the thing you like with the thing you dislike.
   
   
2. Belief change script
   This is similar to above but is used for your beliefs about yourself rather than the behaviour. For example, someone who is a smoker believes they are a smoker. However, someone who used to be a smoker but no longer is, believes they were a smoker, but no longer are. You can repeat the process from above in a similar way to change your internal representation of who you are.
   
   
3. Swish pattern 
   The swish pattern is my favourite behaviour change technique that I first came across from Tony Robbins. Again, envision a picture that represents the habit or situation you want to change — before and after. Then, changing the sub-modalities of both the pictures, you explode that new habit you wish to create through the picture of that old habit, smashing it to pieces super powerfully and most importantly, FAST!!! Repeat this process several times until the unwanted habit is not accessible.

This is all about putting the mindset shift ahead of the physical shift. And this is the way it should be. Most people have it all wrong. They put the physical shift first and don’t ever consider the inner workings of the mind. It’s not their fault. They’ve simply never been taught another way. And most people out there are telling them to just work harder and be more disciplined. That’s ridiculous. It’s all backwards. And I feel sorry for them. No wonder people can’t stay on track with their goals and then get disappointed before giving up feeling like a failure.

It’s important to note that the 3 strategies I’ve described above are simply introductory explanations. To have success with these strategies you must source a qualified and experienced practitioner to coach you through them. The information I’ve given you is solely intended to introduce you to the concept, not to be able to perform these strategies yourself either on yourself or someone else.

If you’d like to know more about these strategies, email me at [email protected]. I’m a qualified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner, which means I’m qualified and experienced to administer these strategies, among many more.

What crazy unhealthy habits do you have?

[Image Source: The Whole Health Life]