What is a Habit?

A habit is a routine behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously.  Habits are reflexes – positive or negative – that create the parameters for us to live our lives comfortably or uncomfortably.

Many people have habits that they would rather not have, however sadly, most people never truly break their habits.  Year after year, they slip into the same patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.  Sometimes, it is just one pattern that is behind what they see as several unrelated incidents, and they never realise that they have been repeating the same script since childhood.

We all have habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that we have been practising for a long time and they have become so integrated into our lives that we are no longer conscious of them. 

Actually, much of our life is lived unconsciously through a patterned set of habits – some dating from before we were even able to speak – in times of stress, adults will often make sucking motions/noises with their mouths, as they likely would have made as suckling babies seeking comfort from their mothers.

Modern times have become so complex and are lived at such a fast pace that we give up massive chunks of our waking life to our unconscious – from wakening up, heading to our workspace, eating, even how we relate to others.

Habits allow us to function on automatic pilot, saving us from mindfully having to think about how we are actually responding to life so that we can move through our life attending to what we perceive to be ‘more important matters’.

For sure, some of our habits serve us well.  Others, however, serve only to reinforce the difficult patterns in our lives. 

Hypnotherapy & mindful therapy techniques can quickly, successfully and sustainably release and reprogramme negative patterns of thoughts and habits.  Do get in touch with me for a free telephone consultation.

My Stockbridge therapy room is now located at the beautiful Luke Bremner Personal Training Studios on N W Circus Place, adjacent to the Stockbridge Pharmacy.

This was originally published in the August/September 2020 issue of the Stockbridge Spotlight