A Mindset Is A Terrible Thing To Waste…

You may have seen many seminars online that talk about “mind over matter” and positive affirmations and all that stuff. Well, it usually sounds like that practice of some Zen Buddhist but not for us “normal” types. To go into some basic science behind this, the fact of the matter is, your brain cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction! You can! But your brain can’t tell the difference between something that is happening and something that you’re thinking. 

Don’t believe me? 

Recall a horrible experience you had, and don’t the feelings come rushing back to you? Exactly! This is why something like positive self-talk is a massive tool to use in your methods to overcoming addiction. Motivational speakers, politicians, and film stars all use this type of technique to overcome mental obstacles for this very reason. 

If you’re reading this thinking “I can’t give up that easily” or “I’ve tried already, and it doesn’t work” then this is purely a mindset issue. The notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy springs to mind here! To further point out the impact a good mindset has, Cancer Control Research Institute published a paper in 2006 about the effectiveness of giving up smoking. There were two groups. One gave up gradually, and one went cold turkey. Amazingly, it’s the cold turkey approach that proved to be the most effective in giving up smoking. This goes to show that once you are into a certain mindset, it is incredibly instrumental in your habits. If you start to begin a period of talking to yourself out loud and using positive affirmations, this will be a good beginning to overcoming addiction.

While the cold turkey is a strong approach to giving up something for good, the stresses of modern life mean that we can relapse quickly. We are having a bad day, and then we reach for the chocolate or sugary drink to give us a fix. And the modern way of life is must faster than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and is completely unrecognizable when you compare it to 100 years ago! 

We now have to work so many jobs to keep ourselves afloat financially, and so we don’t have time for cooking healthy and nutritious meals, which means we reach for the convenience foods like pizza and ready meals. It’s just a habit of life that we get into nowadays. But it’s in these types of scenarios that making a drastic change in our lifestyle doesn’t seem to work properly. We get stressed too easily now, and things like social media are causing this because we are seeing idealized versions of other people’s lives and we feel like we are missing out, which gives us acute anxiety symptoms that can build up over time. Add this to a job that is stressful and takes up most of your time anyway, you can’t help but reach for things that make you feel good, like sugar and dopamine (which you get a “hit” from by going on your smartphone). This leaves you in a difficult cycle to break out of. 

This is where lifestyle comes into play. It’s all about making a cycle that is not unhealthy. So for something like smoking, you can make the change from cigarettes to e-cigarettes or vapes. As it provides a nicotine hit and is something that still has all the manifestations of smoking, the physicality, the social aspect of smoking outdoors, but without the unhealthiness of actual cigarettes. There are companies like Aspire who sell vapes and other products, and you can see their ecigs online. E-cigarettes are incredibly popular now as an alternative to real cigarettes the reason is because the whole “feeling” of it is not that far removed from the original practice. 

It’s all about tricking your mind. This is why something like portion control works in respect of the size of your cutlery. The actual practice of eating takes that much longer, and with smaller plates, it looks like a bigger meal than it actually is, so your satiety hormone, leptin, is hit quicker. It’s all in the mind.

So what can you do to help your mind function that much better in the act of giving up something? Well, in terms of diet, you would be surprised to hear that fat is proving to be the tool in fighting this battle! Fat is not the enemy that we once thought it was, and many scientists like Dr. David Perlmutter have written books on how you can use fat to turn off your hunger hormone, ghrelin. You may have seen many people talk about how they have a high percentage of fat in their diet, about a 70% ratio to 15% protein and just 5% carbohydrates, and yet they lose a massive percentage of their body fat. Diet and addiction used to mean that you had to starve yourself or go without, and now with these revelations that fat is not the enemy it once was, it makes dieting and changing your health a much easier thing to do.

Whatever the addiction you may have, the fact is that there is one tool you have that can help you beat it. Mindset is such a complex subject, and it warrants a lot of further research into it, but the phrase “it’s all in the mind” always comes up. This is because it is your obstacle, and your tool, to getting over any type of addiction.

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