“To think is to practice brain chemistry.” – Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Habits! Habits! Habits! Good habits! Bad habits! Just think about how long and how often you have practiced the habits you currently possess. Whether good or bad, the power of practice has created all of them. You have demonstrated the power of practice with or without your awareness of doing so.
You undoubtedly already know that new habits don’t form quickly and easily, but once formed they can be hard to change. You know how much work it takes to “break a bad habit.” Anything and everything can become a habit, even thinking. If you are one of millions whose thinking has been programmed to habitually default to the negative, you probably don’t just think negatively about everyone and everything external to you. It is almost certain that you habitually think negatively about yourself as well.
The culprit that denies us the experience of total satisfaction in life, otherwise known as happiness, is the negative way we think about ourselves. This habit is one of our most practiced and therefore one of the hardest to change. Most of us pay little if any attention to the habitual negative thoughts we have about ourselves that have been ingrained in us over the course of a lifetime. How could something that is usually so removed from conscious thought — the way we think about ourselves — have so much power? Years of unconscious practice!
Most of the harmful automatic, even addictive, behaviors that we have already addressed became habits without much awareness of what was happening, even the habit of calling yourself stupid. As a result, you like many others, have muddled through life trying to make yourself feel as good as possible, in any way you can, without a clue there is a better way.
