Changing habits and living a double life

I was stood in my kitchen, it was a glorious Sunny day, I had just been for a run with my dog, Rex. 

I had two hours to enjoy before my first personal training client at 9am. 

Still breathing heavily from the workout and feeling incredibly alive I went into the garden.  

I took a sip of my freshly made avocado, apple, raw egg, wheat grass and carrot smoothie and took a big drag of my cigarette. 

Did I manage to slip that one by you? Probably not. 

Ok so like most humans I am a mess of contradictions.  

Its 2006 and at this stage in my life I am an extreme version of such, to save this becoming a novel I will give you some bullet points. 

Career: personal trainer, Doctor surgery health advisor, Sports therapist, Nutritional advisor. 

Personal health: 15 veg per day, super foods, Organic meat, bottled water only, exercise daily.

Social life: A ton of chocolate, drinking every night, heavily 3 nights (heavily means more than the others nights but all nights would fit into the bracket of heavily), Smoker, 10 per day, 20 plus when heavy drinking.

Relationships: A solid divide between clients, friends, colleagues. 

I grew up in the church, that is to say I went to church on Sunday, I studied and I observed and I came up the person that I needed to be in order to be accepted there. 

It was my mum who took me there so this was also the person I needed to be for my mum.

I then had my friends at school and the person that I need to be for them.  

This is how everyone starts, it has nothing to do with the church, parents, school life.  

From when we are born life is an exercise in working out what we need to be in order to be loved and then trying our hardest to be that. We try to understanding the values of each tribe and then assimilate that as best we can.   

Neuroscience for those who need to know: 

The Anterior Cingular cortex is part of the mammalian brain and is always scanning our environment and asking: who do I love?  Who loves me? 

It does this is order to allow us to note what behaviours we need to adopted in order to either climb further up the hierarchy or increase our level of safety by gaining more love. 

Thousands of years ago when we were in tribes being kicked out would have meant certain death at the jaws of animal that thought we might make a good meal.  

We still have this dominant part of our brain today. 

This is how most habits are formed, it isn’t about their addictive qualities or the pleasure we derive directly from them they are behaviours we believe are imperative to our social standing or our love, what ever that means to you.  

They aren’t a thing we started doing because of their objective draw, to us, they mean survival and love, and love and survival NOW will always trump health THEN. 

We depend on our habits for survival and acceptance so attempting to remove them can be terrifying for the mammalian brain. It will go into hyper-alert mode on the look out for the slightest indication that we might lose connection. 

Not only that but removing love from your life can very quickly lead to grief.  

Okay hopefully you now understand that habits aren’t about the ‘thing’ they are about love.  

So there I am, somewhat of a hypocrite advising people on health and doing the complete opposite myself.  Trying to teach people how to change habits while having no ability to do it myself.  Also, if I’m honest, no desire to either.  

2007, the desire came, the habits remained.  This is the most difficult time, it’s the time when habits gained their power.  Until we resist a habit we don’t experience our attachment to them.  It is most often at this stage that they can become embedded deeper. 

I wanted to stop smoking, I didn’t really have anyone I could confide in.  Everyone in my life was, as I saw it, either an enabler or had no idea I smoked.  When I played the story of me in my head I just couldn’t imagine it without being a smoker. This is again how the brain works, the habits become part of our identity. 

Every evening I would stand outside and commit.  

“I didn’t enjoy that last cigarette, or the one before. THIS will be my last ever cigarette”.  

This was literally a nightly conversation with myself.  You can only lie to yourself so many times before you realise you’re full of it.  

This, I discovered, is what confidence is all about, keeping the promises you make to yourself.  Gaining other peoples confidence is the same, it’s doing what you said you would do.  

I had well and truly proven to myself that I had zero will power.  If I was going to get off this train if wasn’t going to be by using will power.  

The answer came from doing what I’m doing for you now, writing and digging around in my past.  The church me, the friends me, the school me, the clients me, the colleague me, the relationship me.  

Which one is me? 

None of them? 

All of them? 

When your habits make up who you are they’re inescapable, when you realise that they are just who you are for other people they start to lose their hold - Unless you’re attached to the idea of yourself as a performing monkey.  

This was revelatory to me, it didn’t just stop the smoking, it didn’t just stop the drinking.  It revealed all sorts in incongruence in my life. It wasn’t fun, it was both challenging but comforting at the same time.  

Each version of me seemed to have different values and beliefs. As I held up each belief and value to each group some of them would stand true and some of them would just fall apart because they weren’t true.  

I used to agree with colleagues that clients lacked will power to do the things they said they said wanted to do.  When I held that story up to every group it lost its truth.  

The desire to remove a habit merely means that that habit no longer projects to the world who you want to be.  If you no longer wish to be that person then stop giving it attention, instead turn your attention fully to who you do want to be and select the habits or behaviours that demonstrate that.  

New habits required attention, Intension and Repetition. 

So how will you create daily attention? 

What do you intend to do and why? 

When will you do it to make sure it happen? 

How will you know if its working? 

What are your expectations of the challenge, how hard will it be? 

What will have to happen to make you quit? 

Want to change your life? 

Just dig a little deeper 

Ed Ley 

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