Ipi-Ear: Six Unusual Steps to Breaking any Life-Threatening Habit

Once this arouses real hatred that makes you wish to punch the enemy habit on the ridge of the nose, then you are ready for the next step.

d. Extricate

To extricate yourself from a situation entails bringing yourself out. It entails withdrawing your identity from the identity of the given situation. It means to ’stand out’ from it. People often talk of extricating themselves from a relationship. Now, you can borrwo a leaf from this parlance of interpersonal relationships. Having imagined the habit a friend-seeming enemy, the idea of relationship is already evoked. So, it won’t present a difficulty to you. Now, it is time to demonstrate your withdrawal from the relationship. How do you do this? Again, you appeal to the imagination. Think of the situations that favor the habit in question. Then, imagine you are in that same situation. Make this seem very very real. Then follows a battle.

Battle might be too strong, even a misleading word to use here. Yet, it is necessary given the nature of what happens in the instance. The battle is just a simple trick that you employ to strengthen your will, which has gradually been weakened over time, against the habit. This is how the battle goes: Once you place yourself – albeit mentally -  in the tempting situation that encourages the habit, you will normally feel drawn to indulge the habit. That is the power of imagination which you should never belittle. ( Note: Every habit is fueled from the imagination. Before you smoke in the open, your imagination had first done so, thereby urging your desire on ). Now, while the imagination draws you – and while you make it seem very real – imagine you refused to bulge. Think of the most powerful of the temptation, and imagine yourself still refusing to yield. Imagine yourself showing this personified habit the final contempt. Then, act triumphant above him(it). Go as far as celebrating the victory with friends. You must not tell them the cause of the celebration though. It’s enough that you, alone, know what you are doing. Then, go to the next step.

e. Affirm

Now, that you have conquered the enemy, it is time to affirm your victory. This is how to do this: Think of yourself before you formed the habit; yourself while you had the habit; and yourself now that you have cast the habit off ( Don’t have a double mind about this. Know that you are no longer under the power of the habit). Call these three selves or eras of your life A, B and C. Identify A with C. They are your pure true selves. B was a period in which you were contaminated by some foreign particles; something like mixing flour with sand. You were the flour while the habit was the sand. No matter how closely the two had mixed together, the still were different from each other. Remind yourself that you were once alife without the habit (That is the A segment); that you once felt you could not live without the habit (that is the B segment). Now, realise that since A was possible, B was all a lie; and that, if A was real and possible, C too was real. You are back home. Shout it to yourself. Then comes the last of six steps.

f. Re-affirm

As the name already implies, this step is just the repeat of the some earlier steps. You are a victor, aren’t you? Every victor should know that the defeated is not happy, and should prepare for a possible reprisal. A good victor should not wait for an attack. The best defence, he knows, is attack. So, to re-affirm your victory, keep repeating the fourth and fifth steps on daily bases. This is to shake off the grips of the habit on your psyche completely.

Conclusion

Once you are through tackling one habit, then you can take on another. Take it like a joke. Laugh at your failures if any and then, relaunch your battle. Do not be anxious, or you will be attacking your self instead. Fight the battle playfully.