So often we demonize our bad habits. But what if those habits are working to bring us messages about our perfect human design?

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.

Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist.

Show Notes

When we have an unwanted habit like overeating it can feel like there’s something broken about us. Our culture tends to shame those with unwanted habits and it is widely assumed that there is something wrong with anyone who struggles with them. Judgments, including self-judgments, are made about a perceived lack of discipline or lack of self-care. 

But what if an unwanted habit like overeating was a sign of all that’s right with you, not with something that’s wrong?

For decades, we’ve been approaching unwanted habits as though they are the enemy. How’s that working for us? Not well, I’d say. We only have to look at the rising statistics about obesity or drug and alcohol addiction to see that this seems to be a battle we’re losing. Badly.

In this course, I’d like to explore turning our attitude toward unwanted habits on its head. It’s so easy to misunderstand what an unwanted habit is trying to tell us, so we’ll explore the messages habits are trying to send us and how our unwanted habits are actually a perfect part of our innate design.

If that sounds absurd or ridiculous, consider that until very recently we thought we had only five senses. Scientists now identify more than 20. Things look true until we are presented with an alternative.

I’m Alexandra Amor and I’m an author, a podcaster, and someone who’s searched for answers about my own unwanted overeating habit for the past three decades. Name a strategy for resolving a habit and I’ve tried it. Nothing worked.

Then in 2017 I discovered a field of spiritual psychology that had me doubting my perceived brokenness and instead awakening to the innate well-being that is within all of us. This change in understanding has me looking toward my wholeness, rather than perceived brokenness, and has helped me to resolve so much of what I had been suffering with for years. It has led me back to my natural state of calm resilience. No will power required.

If you are someone who has an unresolved and unwanted habit that’s what I want to share with you in this course.

Lesson 1: Your habit is not a problem

Hello and welcome,

Have you ever found yourself engaged in a behaviour while simultaneously berating yourself for that behaviour? I’m guessing you answered yes to that question because the truth is almost all humans have this experience at one time or another. This is an unwanted habit.

And it’s possible, if you’re listening to this, that you’ve tried to stop an unwanted behaviour at one time or another. Our tried and not-so-true techniques to stop such habits often involve things like will power, or distracting ourselves, or tricking ourselves into avoiding the habitual behaviour. We can work really hard to try to force or convince an unwanted habit to go away and leave us alone. Unwanted habits can feel like a monkey on our back, one who is clingy and relentless when it comes to needing our attention.

I personally struggled with an overeating habit for 30+ years. That habit felt like a character flaw, a failing, and a personal weakness. It was also something I was deeply ashamed of. So I traveled the self-help road for all those decades, trying to ‘fix’ myself. I focused mightily on the problematic nature of the habit; that’s where all my attention went – innocently thinking of the habit as a problem.

Among the fixes I tried were talk therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, counting food points, extremely restrictive diets, hypnosis, emotional freedom technique, rational recovery, cognitive behavioural therapy….I could go on. This is by no means an exhaustive list of what i tried.

None of it worked. In fact, my overeating habit got worse over the years.

But what if our unwanted habits are actually an expression of the innate Intelligence that is within all of us? What if they are a sign of our mental health, not a psychological failing? What if they are a sign that we are in perfect working order?

Earlier I touched on the fact that unwanted habits are universal. They cross cultural and geographic boundaries. Why is that? Why are habits and addictions such universal human experiences? 

Conventional psychological theory says that when we have an unwanted habit that we are trying to bury uncomfortable feelings or soothe ourselves, cope with trauma and the bumps and bruises that occur in every life.

In this course, I’m going to turn your understanding of unwanted habits on its head. I’ll explain how all unwanted habits and addictions have the same origin and how their universality actually points toward their wise nature. We’ll talk about how addictions and unwanted habits are not about the substance that’s being consumed; in other words, contrary to what the diet industry tells us, overeating is not about the food. We’ll explore the feedback and messages that your unwanted habit is trying to communicate to you and how wise these messages are. And I’ll share how easy it is to misunderstand these messages and how innocently we can get caught up in that misinterpretation. We’ll also explore alternatives to the ways we have historically dealt with an unwanted habit.

Let’s begin by talking about the way that we’ve viewed unwanted habits like overeating up to now. It’s easy to experience these habits as problems, isn’t it? We have cravings and unwanted urges that seem to force us into behaviours that we don’t want to be engaging in. We find ourselves eating too much or eating foods that aren’t good for us. Or we consume vast quantities of food only to spend days punishing ourselves in response. These things can become cyclical; we engage in the overeating behaviour, only to regret it afterwards and swear we’ll never do it again. But then we do.

If you’re listening to this then no doubt in an effort to help yourself get off the roundabout you’ve tried many things to break your habit: will power being a very common approach. White knuckling it through days of tuna fish and steamed vegetables. Or maybe tracking what you’re eating, writing down everything that goes into your mouth. Perhaps creating a list of forbidden foods and swearing you’ll never eat them again. Or tricking yourself into different behaviours by emptying cupboards and the fridge and starting fresh.

We’ve all had experiences similar to this when it comes to trying to break a habit. So one very important thing I’d love you to hear from me today is that while you – and I – were doing all those things we were doing them because they made sense at the time. These are the tools we had access to for dealing with unwanted habits. 

Restriction. Will power. Wrestling our cravings into submission.

Or trying to.

If you can, in this moment, I’d love for you to offer yourself some compassion around this. It might feel heavy; all the effort and subsequent lack of success that you experienced. But I’ll repeat myself and say you were doing what you knew to do at the time. It was the best solution you had to offer yourself.

In this course I’d like to offer you an alternative. I’d like to show you how your unwanted habit is actually a sign of your mental health. And then explore how when we see habits through this lens our battle with them can slow down and then eventually stop entirely.

Let’s begin with the next lesson where we’ll explore the intelligence behind your cravings.

If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like you to close your eyes (if it’s safe to do so) and settle into yourself. Feel your breath going into and out of your lungs. Feel it filling up your chest like a balloon and then releasing and relaxing.

Now I’d love for you to call to mind a time when you felt content and peaceful. That time might be recently or it might be long ago. Doesn’t really matter when it was. What I’d like you to bring to the front of your mind is a time when you felt a really good feeling. You might have been having a laugh with a friend, or sitting quietly in the sun, or enjoying a concert or sporting event that makes you happy. Maybe you’re creative and can recall a time when you felt particularly fulfilled by a project or the process of making something beautiful.

I’ll give you a moment to bring something to mind.

That feeling, however you may describe it – genuine contentment, happiness, relaxation, fulfillment – for the purposes of this lesson let’s call that good feeling home base. 

Let’s do another little exercise. Think about the ideal vacation for you. Imagine for a moment what that would be. There’s no need to overthink it; you’ll know when the idea for what would look to you like an ideal vacation pops into your head.

Now, let me ask you this: If I asked a group of 10 people to imagine their ideal vacation do you think everyone in that group would picture the same thing? Of course not. Some people would picture white sandy beaches and lying in the sun. Someone else might imagine racing down snowy slopes on skis. A third person might picture visiting museums and art galleries in foreign cities. Someone else might imagine spending time at home with their family.

What we can see from this exercise is that idea of ‘vacation’ isn’t a specific place or experience, it’s a feeling.

In our fast paced Western culture how much time do we spend thinking about vacations, planning them, dreaming about getting away from our regular lives?

Why is that?

Now, what does all this talk about good feelings have to do with resolving an unwanted habit, you might ask.
Well, it points to the idea that we’re so often searching – mentally or physically – for a good feeling. Imagined lottery wins, fantasy romance scenarios, dream jobs, a super fancy car, greater financial security. A desire for love, connection, peace of mind. Vacations. All these things are pointing toward our innate wish to connect with and experience good feelings.

We are all wired to want to feel good, to have that ‘home base’ feeling. And, more to the point, not just to have it, but to embody it. To experience it deep in our cells.

Ask yourself, would anyone accuse us of being mentally unhealthy for wanting to experience a good feeling?

No, probably not.

It may sound obvious, but one way that humans attempt to get that home base feeling is by doing things that make us feel good. Things that give us a ‘rush’ so to speak of the good feeling that we are searching for and that we are made of. These things can be shopping, smoking, drinking, sex, drugs, and yes, eating. All these things, and so many more, are things we do to try to manufacture a good feeling.

Think of how you feel when you first indulge in your unwanted habit – before the guilt and recrimination set in. It feels good, right? The first pull on a cigarette or the first bite of a favourite food. There’s a good feeling there, if only for an instant.

That’s one reason why we do it. That’s why we indulge in our unwanted habit over and over again. We are trying to feel that good feeling.

You might say, “Thank you Captain Obvious. Of course habits are trying to simulate a good feeling. Have you eaten a piece of chocolate cake lately? It’s heaven in every bite.”

The reason I bring up this obvious idea, is that it points out that unwanted habits are a sign of our mental health, not of mental weakness or a lack of will power or an addictive personality. Unwanted habits are a way for us to create a simulated good feeling. Unfortunately, they come with baggage attached; guilt, shame, self-recrimination, not to mention their adverse affects on our health. But their origin is innocent. We are always searching for a good feeling and we will do so even when that search causes problems.

We are searching for a good, calm, peaceful, soothing feeling because that feeling – that home base – is our most natural state. And we know this, instinctively, even when we’re far away from that feeling. 

Think about babies for a moment. As long as their needs are met – their diaper is clean, they are fed and have had enough sleep – they live in that calm, peaceful place. This is who we are, and this is what our unwanted habits like overeating are trying to achieve.

The good news is that when we begin to see our unwanted habits for what they are – a wise part of our innate intelligence, an indicator of our well-being – then we can let go of some of the baggage that comes along with those habits. And when we stop beating ourselves up for having the habit, that itself is one important step to resolving an unwanted habit.

In the next lesson we’re going to build on this idea of our home base feeling and talk about what unwanted habits are trying to accomplish in addition to creating a good feeling.

Do you own an Instantpot? They were all the rage a few years ago. (I love mine.) Instantpots are a brand name for what my grandmother called a pressure cooker, which is a pot that cooks its contents with pressure rather than with heat. The pot is sealed and pressure builds up and that’s what cooks whatever’s inside.

If you own either an Instantpot or a pressure cooker you know that there’s a valve that allows you to release some of the pressure in the pot. When you do so it makes a whooshing sound and you can see steam escaping the pot.

In my work I very often use the following metaphor for unwanted habits: our minds are like pressure cookers and our behaviour – our unwanted habit – is the release valve on that pressure cooker. The pressure inside the metaphorical Instantpot is created by our busy thinking. So in other words, our unwanted habit releases the pressure that builds up in our minds from our thinking.

The thinking you experience in life is like the contents of that pressure cooker. It can build and build until it feels like too much to cope with, swirling around inside your noggin, keeping you awake at night, interfering with the concentration required for other things. The solution for the build-up of this pressure is the release valve. That release valve shows up as behaviours that can run the gamut from lashing out in anger, to over shopping, to yelling in traffic, to overeating, smoking, drinking too much, and hoarding, just to give a few examples.

The release valve gets us back to a better feeling, to the home base feeling we talked about in the previous lesson. Even if the change is only incremental, we still feel a bit better. Some of the pressure within us has been released and we are slightly more calm, more peaceful. 

I’m going to say that again so you don’t miss it. Our unwanted habits are solutions, not problems.

A habit releases some of the pressure within you that is created by busy thinking. In this way, a habit is a necessary and natural part of your perfect design. Without the release valve the pressure cooker would explode. 

This is another reason why your unwanted habit is a sign of your mental health and a sign that you are in perfect working order. That release valve behaviour is evidence that you are looking for a better feeling, that you are wired to search for and crave a good feeling. What that tells us is that you are made of peace and well-being and your habit is evidence of that. Just like a fish will always need water, humans will always need what they are made of; peace, love, well-being. Your habit is a truth about who you are at your core.

We tend to think about unwanted habits and cravings as though they’re a broken part of ourselves, like they’re a flat tire on a car or an app on our phone that is on the fritz and keeps sending us unwelcome alerts. However, let me challenge that by adding another metaphor into the mix: What I would like you to consider is that cravings are actually a barometer. And that barometer is always in perfect working order.

A barometer is a device that tells us about the atmospheric pressure in our geographic area.

Barometers measure the layers of air that wrap around the earth that are affected by gravity. We call this the earth’s atmosphere. Changes in the atmosphere affect the earth’s weather systems. The way that a barometer reflects atmospheric pressure is typically with hands (like a clock’s hands) on a dial pointing toward numbers.

“Duh,” you might say. “If I feel super stressed I crave a piece of cake. That’s not breaking news.”

You’re right. It’s not. But what I’m suggesting is that the craving itself is not an indication that there is anything wrong with you, even when you’re feeling stressed or triggered by life. There is wisdom behind the cravings we feel that is deeper than a feeling that we want to use a substance in order to try to soothe and comfort ourselves when we’ve had a hard day. What I’m saying is that there is a beautiful and perfect mechanism within us (food craving, or any kind of craving) that lets us know what the ‘weather’ inside us is doing at any given moment. We need that signal (the craving) to remind us of our innate, peaceful nature.

So what’s the alternative to will power and tricking ourselves into stopping an unwanted habit? We all live with thinking in our heads, how can we release the pressure that builds up without turning toward our unwanted overeating habit? Well, here’s where things get really interesting. Unlike other self-help tools I’m not going to direct you toward replacing the pressure value release with some other sort of behaviour. Instead, using a different metaphor, we’re going to look at the nature of what’s in the pot itself.

At this point in our exploration you might be thinking that the solution to the pressure cooker metaphor in the previous lesson would be to change our thoughts so that they don’t build up in the pressure cooker.

And perhaps you’ve even tried to do that in the past. Using mantras or positive reinforcement to change your thinking around your habit.

However, we’re going to look in an entirely different direction. We’re going to look away from positive thinking and monitoring or calming our thoughts, and instead look at the nature of thought itself. When we understand what Thought is and how it works, our unwanted habits can become unnecessary. 

In order to do that, let me switch metaphors from the one in the previous lesson. Imagine you lived in a world where no one had explained to you how a bathtub drain works. Every time you took a bath, afterwards you’d have to find a way to empty the water out of the tub. You might take a bucket and scoop out the water and carry it through your house to the front door, and then take it outside and dump it somewhere. Then you’d have to go back to the tub and scoop out some more water and carry that outside, repeating that process until all the water was out of the tub. Emptying the tub would require a lot of effort on your part, and create a lot of extra stress for you. Plus there would be mess to clean up afterward, drips of water on the floor of your home.

Not knowing any other way to empty a tub, you’d go through this laborious process until the day someone explained to you how drains work. They’d show you that there is a drain on the bottom of the tub where, when open, allows the water to flow away on its own. There’s nothing else for you to do. Once you see this you’ll never empty the tub with a bucket again.

The understanding that I’m exploring in this course is like that information about the drain. I’m pointing out to you how tubs, drains, and water work. If it’s not clear, the water represents your thinking. As you begin to understand this, and as your understanding deepens, you’ll see there’s less and less for you to do with your thinking.

Our thinking flows into us from a source other than ourselves, stays with us for a time, and then moves on without us having to do anything about it. Sometimes the water is crystal clear, sometimes it is murky, but the thing that never changes is that it flows, it moves of its own accord. That is its nature.

We can see this in action in the following examples. If I asked you to think exclusively about pink elephants for the next 10 minutes, and told you i’d give you a million dollars if you could do that, would you be able to do it? 

As much as we’d like to think the answer to this challenge would be yes, we know it’s not possible, right? Especially if you’ve ever tried meditating. Thoughts pop into our minds, sometimes at random, often rapidly, one after the other. No doubt you’re familiar with the expression ‘monkey mind’. 

Are you the master of all that thinking? Can you control every thought that comes into your mind?

No, of course not. 

Continuing with the bathtub metaphor from earlier, if we took a ‘positive thinking’ approach, we would be trying to control the clarity of the water that comes into the tub. That’s a ton of work, and it’s fruitless because the nature of water is that some days it’s clear, and some days it’s not. (Where I live, when we have big rain storms, the water can get very murky indeed.) Being concerned with the quality of the water in the tub at any given moment (positive thinking) is a waste of energy because in the next moment there will be different water in the tub. And then again in the moment after that.

Instead when we focus on understanding the nature of water, knowing it will continue to flow no matter what, we can relax about what the tub is holding at any given moment.

In other words, when we begin to see that thought is flowing through us, like water, like energy, we can rest in the understanding that battling with a craving is like trying to manage or organize the water in a stream. By seeing our thinking for what it is, we can relax knowing that any given thought, including a craving, will be followed soon by another thought. And then another. We don’t need to latch onto the craving thought and manage it.

The other important thing to mention in this discussion of the nature of our thinking is that just like the water in the bathtub, our thinking is designed to settle down all on its own. You could have a toddler in that metaphorical tub, splashing around, having a grand old time with toys and stirring the water up until it slops over the edge of the tub. But the nature of that water is that if you leave it alone, if the toddler stops splashing, the water will settle. There’s nothing you need to do to make it do that. In fact, getting involved while the water is settling will likely only stir it up a bit more.

Your thinking is exactly like the water in that tub. Leave it alone and it will settle down all by itself. No doubt you’ve experienced this, probably on more than one occasion. We’ve all had moments where we were upset about something or angry and then we got distracted. For a moment our anger is entirely gone and we’re focused on something else. Of course, that anger or upset can return, but in that instance did we make it go away? No, it settled down, like the water in the tub, when we weren’t agitating it.

Our unwanted habits, like overeating, are an innocent way that we try to manage the water in the tub when it’s stirred up. Engaging in the habit is a distraction, like I mentioned a moment ago. We become distracted from our busy thinking, if even just for a moment.

But when we understand the nature of thought, the need for the unwanted habit lessens. We begin to rely on our innate design, knowing that if we leave our thinking alone it will settle on its own.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson, resolving a habit like overeating doesn’t come from forcing behavioural change, it comes from understanding the nature of thought. And from understanding your beautiful, innate design that is always pointing you back toward the peace and calm.

I’ve thrown a number of metaphors and new ideas at you in these lessons. If what I’ve said feels like it has scrambled your eggs a bit, that’s okay. That reaction is common when we’re learning something entirely new that contradicts so much of what we’ve believed about ourselves for years, if not decades. Especially if you’re someone like myself who is a natural seeker and has long wanted to find an answer to an unwanted habit.

So as we wrap up, let me briefly go over what we’ve discussed.

These lessons are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring this new field of spiritual psychology commonly called the Three Principles or the Inside Out Understanding. These principles were first articulated by a man named Sydney Banks and it is to him and other teachers who follow him that I must credit for everything I’ve shared here.

It’s so easy, especially for seekers like us, to get caught up in what can feel like a perpetual race to fix ourselves. I admire that impulse in others, and in myself, – it comes from a very pure place – but it can become exhausting. Until I came across this understanding, I felt like I was on an endless self-help treadmill, always running but never reaching a goal. There was always something else to fix or change about myself.

However what I love about the understanding I’ve shared with you today is that it is always, always pointing us back to our innate well-being. There’s nothing we need to fix or change or improve. It’s all there within us, and it always has been.

Exploring this understanding is like having the clouds in an overcast sky gradually part. The blue sky was always there, we just couldn’t see it. The more I am reminded to focus on the sky – the eternal, infinite, entirely whole sky – and not on the clouds, the more the clouds thin and move out of my line of sight.

If it’s not obvious yet, the understanding you’ve just explored in this course is about more than food, more than eating, and more than resolving an unwanted habit. It’s about your true nature and how brilliant and beautiful that is. It’s about the perfection behind our human design and how that design is always working for us, not against us. It’s about how we are always healthy, always whole even when we are struggling with something like an overeating problem, and how that ‘problem’ is itself pointing us back to our innate wholeness and well-being.

Unwanted habits are, surprisingly, a language of love and of wisdom. When we see them for what they are every aspect of our life is changed and sweetened. Life becomes a joyful, gentle exploration rather than a journey filled with disheartening trails and challenges. Trials and challenges are part of life, of course, but they have less weight when we view them knowing we are all infinitely resilient and that we can rely on the well of peace that is always at our core, and always available to us.

My wish for you is that this course is the beginning of your exploration into all that you are. And also that you remember, as often as possible, that your food cravings, or shopping habit, or video game addiction, are not a problem. When we see them for what they really are, we begin to see that they are a gift. And that they are whispering, “You are well. You are whole. You are love.”

I thank you so much for exploring with me. And I wish you all the very best on your journey.

Featured image photo by Laurent Beique on Unsplash

The post Why Your Habit Proves You’re In Perfect Working Order appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.