The simplicity is deceptive, though: there are some physical urges and even more mental habits that keep us stuck in our old patterns.

The physical urges are not so hard: if you stay away from an old habit (like cigarettes) for a week, the urges die down. It’s the mental habits that trip us up. We have a way of seeing ourselves that includes our old habits (like smoking, eating a certain way, etc.) and so we form a bunch of mental habits that keep us stuck in that version of ourselves.

Here’s a method that will change everything for you: become your new habit.

Let’s take a concrete example:

1. You want to quit smoking (or quit scrolling on your phone, etc).
2. It’s hard becaus when you feel stress, you want to smoke. It’s your coping mechanism. This is how you see yourself.
3. Instead, you tell yourself: “I’m a person who meditates or goes for a walk when I’m stressed.” You visualize this new version of yourself, and how healthy and alive they’ll feel.
4. When you get stressed and have an urge to smoke, simply remind yourself of who you are now. You deal with stress by meditating or going for a walk.
5. Become that person by meditating and going for walks whenever you’re stressed. Your mental image of yourself will change, and smoking won’t even be an option.

This is how it worked for many people with smoking — they stop seeing themselves as a smoker, and they won’t consider smoking when they got stressed.

The same thing happened when my friend went vegetarian and then vegan: the idea of eating meat or other animal products isn’t even appealing to her anymore, because it’s not who she is. She did this over and over: She sees herself as someone who is active, who eats whole plant foods, who meditates, who is a loving mother and wife, who creates meaningful things.

Change your self-image. Obliterate your old ideas. Become the new version of yourself.

Clinging to Old Mental Patterns

The mental patterns that keep us stuck in old habits are tied to our old image of ourselves.

Some examples:

• I’m stressed so it’s OK to smoke this one time, I’ll quit later.
• I have visitors so it’s OK to eat this junk, it’s a special occasion.
• This writing is not that important right now, I can do it tomorrow, I have urgent things to deal with.
• This is all their fault, they are making my life frustrating.
• I’ll meditate in a little while, I’m going to scroll on my phone for a bit first.
• I haven’t done the habit in a few days, I don’t want to think about it right now.

Nothing is wrong with any of these mental patterns. But we can notice that they’ll keep us stuck in the old way of doing things.

If we want to let go of them, we can obliterate our old image of ourselves. And create a new one.

Create a New Version of Yourself

If you believe you are someone who exercises every day, then being sedentary for days in a row is not really an option. You get up and move.

If you believe that you eat compassionately, then meat isn’t an option. You eat plants.

If you believe that you are kind, then yelling at your kids isn’t an option. You give them love.

What’s the new version of yourself you’d like to become?

Visualize that new version of you. Feel what it would feel like. It’s an act of creativity, an act of imagination.

Create that new version of yourself. How do they feel, how do they act, what do they do when they are stressed, how do they react to difficult situations?

Now become that person. Become the new being you conjured up.

The post Become Your New Habit appeared first on Psychiatrist Dr. Nadia Mansour.

We make simple things complicated:

• Overwhelm: Doing one task at a time is pretty simple, but we get overwhelmed by all the things. We think about an entire list of things that we haven’t done yet, and we feel stressed about it, and end up feeling like we can’t do any of it.
• Beating ourselves up: If we didn’t do what we thought we should do, we feel like we did things wrong, and we chastise ourselves for not doing things right. This discourages us from just simply starting again.
• Frustration with another person: If people don’t behave the way we want them to, we can get frustrated … and then it can derail us from our intentions.
• Fear about what might happen: Let’s say you need to have a conversation with someone, but you’re afraid of how they might react … you might put off that conversation because of that fear, instead of simply talking to them.

There is nothing wrong with doing all of this — it’s human. This is how our minds work.

However … if we bring awareness to our added mental layer, we can simplify it by letting go of that extra layer. 

It’s about doing things as simply as possible.

For example:

• Decluttering: Most people overcomplicate it, because they feel overwhelmed by how much there is to declutter in their house or office. What would it be like to let go of this layer of “there’s so much!” and just start with one small area? Pick up one thing at a time in that area. Ask yourself if you use/love it or want to get rid of it, and put it in one of two piles. Repeat.
• Email & messages: Like clutter, the idea of “there’s so much!” can overwhelm us and stop us from simply acting. Instead, what if we let go of that mental layer, and just spent 20 minutes taking messages/emails one at a time? Deal with each message before moving on. Repeat.
• Tasks: Same idea — we have so many things to do that it overwhelms us and stresses us out, makes acting on things more difficult. Letting go of the idea of “there’s too much,” we can simply pick the most important thing to work on right now, and focus only on that.
• Habits like exercise or meditation: We have lots of ideas about how hard the exercise is or how we haven’t been meditating as much as we “should” have been … and it creates extra stress and obstacles to just doing the exercise or meditation. What if we let all of that go, and simply went out for a walk or did some pushups? What if we let all of that go and simply sat down to meditate for a few minutes? Habits can be that simple, without all the extra mental layers.

I know it’s not as simple as that, because letting go of the mental layers isn’t always easy. But the point is that it could be simple. It could be much easier, if we could let go of those layers.

So then the practice is to repeatedly let go of the layers. Do things as simply as possible, not worrying about all the usual thoughts about “shoulds” and “too much” and “it shouldn’t be this way.” Removing these extra mental layers, we can simplify our lives greatly.

The post Simplifying Our Mental View appeared first on Psychiatrist Dr. Nadia Mansour.