Break a Bad Habit and Make a New Friend: YOU
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they decide changes must be made. Usually it means breaking a bad habit built up over the years. No matter what the bad habit, the time for change has come and the need to make life changing corrections must be faced.
Making the decision to correct the bad habit is the first major step. In Alcoholics Anonymous the first step is admitting you have a problem. That step applies to everyone who has decided to make a change in their life by improving their lifestyle, self-image or health. Before one can start down the self-improvement road one must first admit what the problem is.
The next step is deciding how to make the necessary changes to break habits and improve their life. Breaking a bad habit is no easy task. Smokers are often told that being addicted to nicotine is as bad as heroin. Even knowing this, every year thousands take the steps needed to stop one of the worst habit-forming addictions our of day. They are ready to face the fact that their bad habit is hurting them and they know that their decision will lead them on a journey of self-improvement that will add years to their life.
People addicted to alcohol are another group who take the journey to self-improvement. Their journey is one that is very welcomed by friends, co-workers and family members who for years have had to endure the effects that this addiction has had on their lives. In many cases the alcoholic has the support of many to help them on their journey of self-improvement.
In recent years one of the most publicized self-improvement movements has been for weight loss. The airwaves are full of advertisements for products to help people lose weight. There are even reality TV shows portraying the struggles that overweight people go through and the self-confidence they gain as the weight drops off.
Although the challenges are great for some of these addictions, the benefits are life-changing for all. The smoker has lowered their risk of cancer; the alcoholic sees life as a sober person and regains the love and respect of family and friends. The life change that weight loss gives is by far the most dramatic. Not only do they feel better and look better; they receive constant feedback from people who can see the physical differences from their self-improvement program.
To start a self-improvement program is easy. Following through and sticking with it is the hard part. There will be times of setbacks, but it’s easy enough to pick yourself up and start again. For the smoker who lasts three months, then has a setback, knows what they did accomplish that and the next time may be able to go further. The dieter can also fall off the wagon without too much damage done before they start back on the road to break their eating habits.
It simply takes making a decision to start, making a plan to help break your bad habits and then following through. Breaking a bad habit often requires the help of a support network and many get much further when they have others to help them.
The end result is well worth the struggle. All who have habit-forming problems and who have decided to make changes in their lifestyle for the better will receive positive feedback The most important feedback they get, after their doctors, is the feedback they give themselves.
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Practicing Staying Present to the Now
Transformational Counseling is about assisting others to transform their life. Transformational Counseling is a process of assisting others to learn how to let go of the past and live fully in the present. To live fully in the present is to become awaken to what is truly real and to our own natural power. Much of our life is spent living in the past, and in the process, attempting to fix it, to make it something that it is or was not. It is from living in the past that we also attempt to create our future, the result always being a living of life as it was in the past. Transformation takes place when we learn to exist in and be present to the Now.
The practice of staying present to our natural power and to that which is real is becoming conscious to what is so, to the Now, to the present. What is so, the Now, has no meaning and exists outside of thought and language. As human beings we tend to give meaning to everything, including other people, ourselves and even life itself. It is in our meaning making that we leave the present and create our life from the past, a life that can be filled with a great deal of anxiety, fear and stress. What is so merely exists and it is in the experience of the Now that we begin to live a life of power and freedom, a life and way of being free from our past.
A specific technique that is very powerful for practicing staying present to the Now is meditation. It is in meditation that one creates the space to experience a very deep state of relaxation, a state that is very healing to both the mind and body. As we know, in meditation ones metabolism slows down, including heart rate and blood pressure. The consistent practice of meditation will reduce anxiety and stress. For some the practice of meditation allows them to access true Being. For others it is way of reconnecting to the Spirit within us. It is in the consistent practice of meditation that the subject and object distinction inherent in language, thought and meaning making collapses thereby resulting in our access to the present, to the Now.
The meditative process can be enhanced by the use of therapeutic relaxation music. Music has always been a very powerful modality for promoting a very deep state of relaxation and even healings. I have found that musical compositions that are harmonically slow, repetitious, with sustained voices, which are rhythmically, random in tempo assists an individual in experiencing a very deep state of relaxation. A second important component of the use of therapeutic relaxation music is the use of binaural audio tones that have been interwoven into the music. The binaural tones, through a process referred to as entrainment or frequency following, gently guides or directs the mind/body to generate more of the targeted frequency of brain wave activity for an even more profound state of relaxation.
The meditative process of practicing staying present to the Now is as follows:
1. Take a comfortable position in an upright sitting position.
2. Allow your legs and arms to be open.
3. Allow your eyes to focus upon a chosen object. The chosen object could be a candle light in a darkened room or any point that you choose.
4. As you focus on the chosen object, allow your muscles to slowly relax from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.
5. Take three slow deep breathes in through your nose as you inhale. Hold each breath to the mental count of four. Slowly exhale each breath out through your mouth. Continue to breath at a slow pace after the three breaths.
6. Continue to focus on the chosen object. When your mind wanders to some thought or thoughts slowly and gently bring it back to your focused concentration upon the chosen object. Simply let go of the thoughts that arise. The thoughts are from the past. Stay focused to what is so.
7. Continue the practice for a prescribed period of time and then go about your daily activities. Each day that you practice you may even choose to lengthen the time you spend with this technique.
The ability to stay in the present, to access the Now, can be enhanced with the consistent practice of meditation. What this will necessitate is one making the practice of meditation apart of his or her daily schedule. With the consistent practice of meditation one will also create the ability to stay even more present to what is so even when not actively engaged in the meditative process. It is through a commitment to the practice of meditation on a daily basis that one will begin to live more fully in the Now.
Harry Henshaw, Ed.D., LMHC
http://www.enhancedhealing.com
Dr Harry Henshaw is in private practice in North Miami Beach, Florida. http://www.enhancedhealing.com
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