The electricity board keep turning off our ‘leccy.
Before you start with your jokes, yes, we have paid the bill, but they recently turned the supply off for a few hours to do something important and not kill themselves in the process.
When it was off a couple of weeks ago, I spent the afternoon elsewhere to make my calls, but today I’ve charged up all my devices, and I’ll be hot-spotting off my phone, feeling pretty confident that I’ll have enough juice to last until lunchtime, at which point I’ll dash to a cafe and cheekily recharge for the afternoon sessions.
Being without power got me thinking about habitual behaviour.
It’s such a massive thing in our lives, but we underestimate it because most habits occur beneath the level of consciousness.
I know I have no electricity today, but what’s the first thing I’m doing when I walk into a dark room?
Yes. I hit the light switch.
Not just once, but every single time!
Now, you might think it’s just me being a bit dizzy with ADHD, and that’s possibly a factor, but I reckon it would affect anyone to some degree, because we are so conditioned to reach for the lights when it’s dark.
Habits are great. They’re vital.
We’re designed to develop habits like that to free up our working memory for more complicated tasks that demand our processing capacity.
Are you in the habit of working out before work? Great.
Are you in the habit of drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning? Marvellous.
Are you in the habit of journalling. Superb.
However, habitual behaviour can also work against us: if we feel fried after work, we reach for the wine to soothe our souls. It happened once; it felt good, so we did it again…and again…and again… until it became as habitual as reaching for the light switch in a darkened room.
This is not so great.
One of the techniques I’ve been learning in hypnotherapy is habit reversal. It’s designed to help you become conscious of the unconscious behaviour that doesn’t serve you.
It’s really cool. So simple, but effective.
I won’t bother using it on myself today for light switches because everything will be back to normal tomorrow, and switching on lights isn’t bad for me, but I can definitely use it to keep my hand out of the cookie jar, which has been spending too much time in there lately.
This is how I will do it. In my imagination, I will practice visualising opening my larder door and seeing the cookie jar. I will then visualise reaching for the lid and then making my hand into a fist. Don’t worry; I’m not going to punch anyone. I just want to imagine my hand balling into a fist whenever I reach for the cookies.
The theory is I’m breaking an automatic habit of unconsciously raiding the jar and ending up with a mouthful of double chocolate chip cookies before I even know I’m doing it.
Balling the fist interrupts my habitual behaviour and gives me time to think.
Of course, I might decide to eat the bloody cookies anyway, but at least I won’t be doing it on automatic pilot, and therefore, it’s highly likely I’ll be consuming fewer cookies.
Do you need to break a bad habit?
DM me, and I’ll give you some pointers!