Have you ever been in a long-term relationship with something that isn’t good for you? But somehow you stick with it and keep going back to it because it’s the only thing you know to have been able to help you feel better when you were at a low point in your life; when you were depressed; when you were sad; when you were unhappy.
Somehow this thing you started becoming acquainted with became your best friend over the years. It’s your muse, your escape, your cave, and your sanctuary. It makes you feel safe and comforted. Yet, at the same time, you know that it’s not good for your health. You’re wasting your health away. You’re wasting money. You’re wasting time and energy. You’re sabotaging not just yourself but also relationships in your life because of your emotional attachment to your bad habit. But because you’ve been reliant on it for so long to help you feel better throughout the ups and downs of life, you don’t know how to cut ties. You don’t know how to break up with it. You don’t know how to say goodbye.
Goodbye is hard especially a forever goodbye with something you’ve been emotionally attached to for so many years. And whatever it is that you resort to to feel better, maybe this past year has been a wake-up call for you to take a look at your life and how you choose to manage your emotions. And maybe, just like me and many other people out there, you realize that you will be complete if you can just permanently cut your bad habit out of your life; if you can permanently change this bad habit; if you can permanently remove your cravings and yearnings for the comfort from what is not good for you.
Here’s the thing - when you realize that you are now an adult and you can be a happier person by eliminating what used to help you feel happier, you’re about to have a breakthrough. When your willpower and determination to change are stronger than your desire to keep relying on something that’s not good for you; when you have done the inner work to heal from past wounds and realize that this is the only thing left that is still holding you back from reaching your full potential, you are ready to successfully transition into the new you. You are ready to find your new source of happiness. And you know that true happiness will arrive when you take back control of your life.
Are you ready to break up with your bad habit? If you are, follow along...
1. Write a breakup letter
Imagine that this bad habit that you’ve been relying on for so many years is a long-term partner or best friend that you need to let go of. Literally, the emotional pain will be similar.
Example,
“Dear _______________
I think it’s time we break up. Thank you so much for helping me through the years and being by my side. Our relationship and codependency have become toxic. I think it’s best we stop being each other’s emotional comfort. My life will be better off without you. I will be healthier. I will save my money and my time. I realized that you have been blocking me from reaching my full potential. I used to always resort to you whenever I feel down. But you’re not healthy for me. This needs to change. And I am so ready for this change. I am going to let you go, for good. I’m sorry to say goodbye. Please take care of yourself.”
2. Find new activities to fill the time with
Those hours that you used to spend on your bad habit, you now have to spend it elsewhere. The first struggle will be how to change your thought patterns from thinking about your bad habit to not thinking about it. How can you spend the hours you used to spend on your bad habit on something else? Something that is healthier and better for you - the ‘you' that you’ve dreamed of becoming or being. And now you’re on track to become that person for real - it’s no longer a fantasy or a wish.
What you replace the hours with needs to be engaging. It has to be something that can get you into the flow state that you forget about your bad habit. It has to be something that you truly enjoy, can focus on, and get lost in. It has to be something that gives you inner peace, contentment, and joy. Because if not, you will keep missing your bad habit. You will keep yearning for its comfort it used to give you even though you know it’s bad for you.
Now write a list of things you can fill up your time, thoughts, and energy with.
a. ____________
b. ____________
c. ____________
These will go into your daily schedule & to-dos.
3. Start doing these things regular that they become a habit
Initially, there will be times that you still keep thinking about your bad habit. So you have to force yourself to spend time with your new activities until you stop missing your bad habit - until you successfully rewire your thought patterns and stop having cravings.
Putting in the time and creating schedules for your new habits. Block out your free time where you used to spend on your bad habit with your new habits.
4. Create an environment where you won’t be reminded of your bad habit
Sometimes being in the same old environment, we can get easily triggered. We just fall into the traps of engaging in our old habits - subconsciously. Because, hey, we are creatures of comfort, and old habits provide us comfort, no matter how bad they may be. Changing our environment and our surroundings can help us break free.
So how can you be in a new environment where you can form new habits that help your brains recognize and start memorizing that you create new routines, thought, emotional, and behavioral patterns?
5. Remind yourself of your goals - the why - the reasons you want to be the new you
The only reason and the only thing that can really drive this change is you and your desire to change. No matter how much someone tells you your bad habit is toxic and unhealthy for you, if you don’t have the desire to change yet, you won’t ever succeed in letting go of it. But here you are, ready to make that change and cut off cold turkey whatever has been holding you back for so many years.
Close your eyes for a couple of minutes and visualize the new life:
What would your life be like without this bad habit?
What would you be able to do and achieve without this bad habit?
How much more time would you have to spend on other things without this bad habit?
How much money would you have left without this bad habit?
How much healthier you’d be without this bad habit?
And how would the factors listed above enable you to create and live the life you’ve been dreaming of living?
Every day, for a few minutes, before you start your day, I want you to set your intention right. Start with the mindset that you’re going to do this; you’re going to achieve this; you’re on the path to becoming the new you.
[ Click on the images to download ]
Use these printables to help you create your new life. Stick to this for at least 30 days before you give up. If you miss one day, don’t be discouraged. Just keep on trying.
At the end of the day, it’s all about changing your thought patterns which will then change your emotional and behavioral patterns. If you can shift your thoughts and focus, then you can slowly cut the emotional ties to the old habit. Practice shifting your thoughts and focus until you forget the old habit and start forming emotional attachments to your new habits.
A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings. Always believe in yourself.
This calendar and to-do list app is designed to help you cultivate happiness by embracing the power of positive thinking, mindfulness, gratitude, and self-development. When opening the planner you might see a page dedicated to setting goals that will increase your happiness, or it might ask you to engage in self-reflection, or to prioritize those things which truly make you happy. Each day you’ll start off with a positive or exciting thought to motivate you until the end of the day when you’ll express gratitude. And at the end of each month you’ll have the chance to reflect on the lessons you’ve learned. By honing your attention and getting you to consider those things that really matter in your life you’ll find yourself in a happier place overall.
“It’s not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”
- Robert T Kiyosaki
Our beliefs are so powerful that they dictate the direction of our lives. We only see what we believe to be true. We only attract what we believe we deserve to receive. Our beliefs are the lens through which we see the world. Unless we change our beliefs, it is unlikely that our situations will change. Our beliefs have been formed since the day we were born. Our environment, upbringing, education, and experiences have all come together to create who we are today. And just like positive experiences add to who we are, negative experiences tend to create walls within us for protection.
I remember when I was in primary school, I participated in several school competitions from art to math to science. My dad told me that the secret to becoming a winner is to think like a winner. And the winner does not let doubt, particularly self-doubt, enter their mind. I grew up with a great life coach, whom I’m blessed to call ‘dad.’ But even then, I still had a lot of self-limiting beliefs creep in. I had doubts, insecurities, and fears. As I got older, I started pinpointing what those limiting beliefs were and tried to get rid of them one by one.
Telling yourself that one of your beliefs is invalid can feel like you are lying to and robbing yourself. But the fundamental truth is that beliefs are at the core of who we are.
Here are the steps I had to go through each time I worked on removing a self-limiting belief.
1. Identify what your limiting beliefs are.
Identify the beliefs that you want to work on and overcome.
Examples of such beliefs are:
I am not good enough.
I won't ever find love and be in a happy, committed relationship.
I don’t believe I can start my own business and make it succeed.
I want to ask for what I want, but I believe I will be rejected again.
I can never make money from my passion.
I don’t trust the opposite sex.
Life is unfair.
It can be extremely hard and we may feel that it would be very difficult to try to challenge these beliefs. But if you’re reading this now, it means that you realize some of your beliefs are holding you back in life and you want to work through them.
Congratulations! It’s time to make some more progress.
2. Identify the root causes of those beliefs
Now that you know what your limiting beliefs are, it’s time to uncover how these were formed in the first place. Who or what planted the seed within you?
If you often find yourself feeling that you’re not good enough even though no one is saying that to you now, can you identify who in your childhood said that to you? Did your parents or caretakers make you feel like you’re not good enough? Did someone at school say so? What about now? Do you still find that you subconsciously surround yourself with people who think that you’re not good enough?
If you don’t believe that you will ever find love and be in a healthy, loving relationship, is it because you grew up with divorced parents? How did your last relationship end? Are you still hung up on your last relationship? Have you worked through your intimacy and abandonment issues?
If you don’t believe you can start your own business and that you will likely fail, root causes may be that (1) you don’t believe in your own capability. You don’t have enough self-confidence and self-belief. (2) you’ve seen many businesses close to you fail (3) people around you, family and close friends, believe that starting a business and becoming successful is something that one in a million can do.
If you are too scared to ask for what you want because you have been rejected too many times in the past, identify why you got rejected. A lot of times, this has nothing to do with you but to do with them and their criteria. And if it’s in regards to love, remember, people cannot give what they do not have within themselves. A lot of the time, it’s about them and their circumstances in life, not about you.
If you don’t believe that you can make money from your passion, it could be because (1) you don’t believe in yourself (2) you have been told to believe that passions are not to be pursued professionally. This belief could also be passed onto you from your parents because parents oftentimes pass on their beliefs to their children.
If you don’t trust the opposite sex, it could be because you’ve been cheated on before, you grew up with a parent who cheats and witnessed the pain, or you have friends who sleep around so you learn the tricks of the game.
If you believe life is unfair, this could be because you focus on what you don’t have and what you lack rather than being grateful for what you do have. This could be because you compare other people’s front-row highlights to your behind-the-scene lows. This could be because you always focus on the negatives. This pattern likely was formed while growing up. You may have grown up with a caretaker or a parent whose view of the world was negative. Therefore, you started adopting those beliefs and focused on the negatives as well.
3. Challenge your beliefs.
Now you’ve identified your beliefs and the cause of them, it’s time to challenge those beliefs by finding the other side of the argument. Most of the time, we surround ourselves with people with the same beliefs. So our limiting beliefs get reassured and reaffirmed, making us feel that our beliefs are right and that it is the only way to see the world. But this is not true. As you’re reading this, you’ve probably already realized that you have limiting beliefs that are holding you back and you want to get rid of them for good. In order to change your beliefs, you must change your environment. Remember, we are a product of our environment and our brain subconsciously mirrors the people and things we are in closest relation to.
For example:
If you don’t believe that you can start your own business, then start looking at businesses that succeed. Make friends with and talk to entrepreneurs who have started businesses and are successful. Surround yourself with people whose beliefs challenge your own limiting belief as much as you can so that you eventually erase your old belief from your mind and adopt the new belief.
If you don’t trust the opposite sex, then this unconsciously makes you attract the opposite sex who are not to be trusted. Your limiting belief in this area also sets a low standard for what you should and should not accept which does not go with what your heart truly desires. Sometimes we start tricking ourselves as a self-defense mechanism so that we do not get hurt. Trust issues are hard to overcome and I still combat them myself. Fully giving trust to the opposite sex right away can be hard when you’ve been hurt in the past. Challenge this belief by becoming friends with men and women who do not play around and only date one person at a time. By doing this, you will start to see the other side of the coin. Your existing belief will get challenged and slowly you will start changing your belief.
If you don’t believe you can make money from your passion, then start making friends with people who successfully turn their passion into a profitable business. Learn from them. Absorb the good energy from them. See how they do things. Surround yourself with people whose beliefs challenge your old beliefs. This will slowly change your beliefs.
If you believe life is unfair and realize that it’s because you have a pattern of focusing on the negatives, then start by removing yourself from negative people. A lot of the time, we continue to hang out with people with the same beliefs as us because it’s comfortable. But comfort is exactly what’s stopping us from growing and making changes in life. Most of our learnings are unconscious. Hence, we need to be mindful of the environment we put ourselves in. Realize that some old attachments can be let go of if they continue to bring us down. Make room for new connections in your life - those who embody the thought, emotional, and behavioral patterns you want to adopt. If you want to be more positive, surround yourself with positive people. This might feel strange and not comfortable in the beginning. But slowly, you will get to see a new perspective, and you will be able to see the glass half full, rather than half empty. Or even better, you will start being thankful that you even have a glass!
4. Keep a journal for your thoughts & beliefs.
Changing habits is hard. Changing our beliefs is harder. But once we can change a belief, our habit will automatically change. This is because our beliefs lay as a baseline for our thoughts which drive our emotions and actions.
In the beginning, it will feel like you’re forcing yourself to believe in something that you do not believe in at all. Try to forget the old belief. Remind yourself of the good reasons why the new belief is more believable. Surround yourself with people who embody the new belief. Read content that reinforces the new belief.
Journal. Observe and record your thoughts. Pay attention to your inner voice. Observe the little things in life that could help you reinforce the new belief. When voices of self-doubts come up, try shutting them down and canceling those thoughts out. Make your new inner voice louder than your old inner voice through positive affirmations and repetitive visualization.
Slowly, one day, when you successfully adopt the new belief, you will feel like a brand new person. You will even forget that you used to have that old belief and what it felt like to have a belief that held you back for so long.
Our Happiness Planner app now has a voice note feature that is designed to help you practice empowering your own inner voice. All voice files can be downloaded directly to your computer from our web app.
Our Growth Mindset, Self-love, and Confidence Journal are also designed to help you tackle your self-limiting beliefs. Pick the one that is most suitable for your situation.
Remember, it all starts in the mind - and you have the power over that. You just have to keep stretching its limit.
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”
Mother’s Day (in many parts of the world) is exactly 5 days from today. I want to share with you a personal story.
I came back to Thailand, my home country, to get a new visa. Due to the pandemic, I am stuck here until further notice. My initial reaction to the lockdown and the closing of borders was probably like many other people’s. I wished I could continue traveling. I wished I was quarantined with a romantic partner. I wished I could still go out to eat and hit the gym. I initially hated the idea of being stuck at home at my mom’s because I kept reminding myself of past childhood memories where I felt like I was being kept in a cage when I wanted to be a free bird who could be her most authentic self without feeling judged.
Now it’s been over 5 weeks since I moved back to my mom’s. During the first 4 weeks, I kept feeling triggered. I kept feeling annoyed with her little complaints. It reminded me why I didn’t want to live at home and why I wanted to move away so badly.
But now I feel different.
My mom adopted two kids who are now 6 and 11. They are my cousins’ kids. However, my cousins are not responsible adults - kind of broken in their own ways (which I won’t get into). So my mom thinks the kids would be better off if they were in her care. Initially, I didn’t support the idea. I felt like mom was trying to add more responsibilities - especially financial responsibilities - to herself. But now that I’ve been back for a while and start bonding with them, I start to feel attached to them. The kids are really good kids. They even help mom do house chores without complaining. They love helping mom - something that I and my sister never did.
Then it hit me.
It hit me that these kids are happy to help mom with house chores because they feel grateful. They feel grateful that they have a loving home and an adult who loves them like they’re her own. And who am I to not be grateful for my own mother? All I’ve been focusing on is how much she complains about me and is always worried. While my mom has a tendency to focus on her worries instead of her gratitude, I also have a tendency, in regards to my relationship with my mother, to focus on her complaints instead of her love.
Why do I do that? I have the power to change how I feel by simply changing how I look at things. If I focus on her complaints, then I feel annoyed. If I focus on her love, then I feel grateful. Even though her words are exactly the same and maybe we can’t change the way our parents show their love to us, we can change the way we interpret what is being shown to us. The power is in our hands.
You can keep yourself in the past feeling triggered, wounded, and upset holding grudges over someone. Or you can choose to forgive, see the glass half full, and feel thankful that you even have a glass to begin with.
I hope this little personal story inspires you in some way to look at the people in your life differently - not just your parents, but whoever it is that you have in life that may push your buttons from time to time. You can be annoyed by their worries or you can be grateful that someone is even worried about you. The choice is yours.
I hope that this pandemic is giving you a new perspective about something in life, makes you realize what matters and what doesn’t. And if your family’s love is wounded and is still mendable, I hope you get to use this time to heal that wound so that all your deep hidden scars can finally fade away.
