Article Preview:
Read time: 10 minutes.
What you’ll get out of it:
- A simple mental repositioning that will likely double or triple your ability to beat cravings of all kinds
- A few chuckles about orphans amongst friends
Cravings suck.
Without cravings, we could quickly become be 5% body fat, get rich working from home, and take ten years of wrinkles off our face with one weird trick discovered by a mom (even if dermatologists hate her for it!). All we would have to do is make a decision, read the right eHow articles, follow the steps, and we’d be taking shirtless Facebook pics in the Caribbean in ninety days or less.
But if you clicked on this article, you’ve probably tried that a few times and it hasn’t worked out. You get cravings for cake and the first twenty times you resist and declare yourself a winner. Then your girlfriend breaks up with you, your dad tells you he wished you could’ve been a doctor like your brother, and there’s a sale on generic brand mint Oreos. All of a sudden you’re standing in front of the pantry at midnight, frantically scooping frosting into your mouth with all four fingers like a raccoon. (except a grainy cell phone video of this would not go viral and get someone to adopt you…. sorry large orphan readership…)
And cravings are a larger problem than just controlling your food intake, they are major players in drug addiction and drinking problems, they keep people smoking, they contribute to little dick moves in the office as well as embezzlement and corrupt government (the craving for power and money works very similarly in the brain to cravings for things like sugar and nicotine.)
And giving into cravings makes you feel like shit because you experience a loss of power and self-control. Over time, giving in again and again majorly depletes your confidence and self worth and contributes to more anxiety and fear in your life. If you have things you want to contribute to your family (sorry again large orphan readership) and the world, you can’t get anywhere near your potential with quickly decreasing self esteem and quickly decreasing health and brain power. Instead of leaving your mark on the world, you’re just trying to get through each day. And that sucks. So let’s fix it!
It’s fairly simple, and it doesn’t require Tony Robbins Motivation Porn or cutting everything not consumable by vegan mormons out of your life forever.
First we’ll get the neurological basics down: what’s causing you to crave, and why you cave in and give up.
Then i’ll give you a small mental switch you can use to immediately change your neurological chemistry to take the biological power away from the part of your brain that’s craving, and activate the smart, reasoned, rational part of your mind to calmly stop the cravings and continue on with your plans for kicking ass. That’s called Super Human Freedom.
Background:
By craving I mean a momentary desire for something that goes against your already standing plans and goals, and is strong enough to compel you to give into the desire, despite knowing that you don’t really want to. This technique will most often apply to things like food cravings, nicotine cravings, drug and alcohol cravings, TV cravings, and things like that. But it can also be applied to the craving to act angry, the craving to indulge in self destructive thoughts, the craving to distract yourself from doing something that scares you, and the craving to do the selfish wrong thing when you know what and how to do right.
All sorts of different parts of the brain may be in charge of craving different things. The basal ganglia is famous for making you insane when it gets a trigger for a reward and the reward doesn't come. The insula has been pegged specifically for nicotine addiction. Several more parts are especially susceptible to dopaminergic spike cravings, alcohol habits, sugar cravings, etc. But what’s most important is the effect these cravings have on your nervous system. You have two parts of your autonomic nervous system.
Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): "fight or flight," spikes when you need to make a fast momentary decision or motor movement. It excels in its speed and reflexiveness. It’s automatic and non-thinking. When its a misplaced reaction, its often not rational. (spoiler alert: all of your PNS powers work against you when your cake craving lights it up like a christmas tree)
Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): "rest and digest," spikes when your healing, resting, growing, synthesizing information, contemplating, creating, etc. anything when you’re relaxed and not pressed for time. (spoiler alert 2: activating this will allow you to beat your craving)
*The two systems work inversely in tandem. If you stimulate one, you calm the other down, and vice versa.
A cravings follows this path
1. One part of your brain, in its limited knowledge, thinks that it needs something, and that what it needs is vital to your health and homeostasis.
2. It sends out a small signal, asking the rest of your brain to acquire what it needs.
3. This registers as a thought or a small feeling. “Hmm. I could go for something salty.” “Hmm, I could for that thing the other orphans are doing these days where you mix some tylenol PM into your smack before injecting intravenously.”
4. Your brain part doesn’t get what it wants. Because you (another part of your brain, like the pre-frontal cortex that knows about the outside world and your greater goals and how to be happy) say, “nah... I’m on a diet and on track for employee of the month if I keep my shit together.”
5. The part of your brain that sent out the request for the chemical, doesn’t understand employee of the month, or cholesterol, or likely even time or language. So it thinks that the body is in trouble because it can’t get what it needs. So it activates the “fight or flight response” in the nervous system. This changes everything. All of the sudden, you REALLY want something salty. You develop anxiety about not having it. You think about all the ways you could acquire it. Your whole brain and body convinces that small part of you that wants to stick to your diet that it won’t hurt, it’s just one, and it feels stressed out, and it will go right back on the diet afterwards, it just needs some salt NOW!
6. Now you have two different directions you can go to beat the craving. The common one that everyone uses, and the one that smart people who read this blog and achieve their goals use.
What Most People Do
If you’re going to be successful and not just give in, you remind yourself of all the reasons why you want to stay on your diet. You get motivated. You get determined. You get amped up and tell yourself that you’re a strong willed voluptuous african american woman who, despite society being against them and “all the haters” will prevail with her dream of a talk show for women. You visualize yourself in your swimsuit and you think of that $50 McDonald’s Gift Card. You get your entire body involved, your heart beats faster and your pupils contract, and you’re focused and determined and in the zone!
Then you distract yourself. You put your mind towards something else to block out the craving. And low and behold. You don’t give in. You are a genius.
OR
You try the same thing again. But now your tired, your blood sugar is low, you haven’t had enough sleep, you’re stressed from work and you’re depressed. You try and get yourself motivated to beat the craving but you just don’t have the energy. You cave. And you feel like shit afterwards. And all of your motivational success story is halted. Enjoy your hour long masturbation sesh to pictures of kids with siblings and parents. Also enjoy the nuns whacking your dick with a ruler when they catch you.
What’s going on? Why Do You Always Fail?
When you motivate yourself out of giving into the craving, you are re-enflaming your Sympathetic Nervous System and trying to make it work for another part of your brain. Your working against yourself and your pitting one part of your brain’s demands against another. It’s like Israel and Palestine (i’ll let you decide which is the pre-frontal cortex and which is the less evolved turban wearing craver terrorist) trying to occupy the same territory. The craving started by lighting up the SNS, then your having another part of the brain light up the SNS even more, but ask for something different. It’s a confusing and high metabolic process. You’ll notice your racing thoughts, your confusion, and your inner conflicts from this type of response.
Whether or not you succeed isn’t dependent on what thoughts you think and what decisions you make, (because you’ve done the same exact thing ten times successfully and now it’s failed). It’s dependent on what type of biological cocktail your working with at the time. Sadness, stress, sleep deficiency, etc. all can be managed and avoided but they will happen eventually, and then you will fail.
So what do you do?
You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight it with water. You shut down your entire Sympathetic Nervous System and kill the craving. There’s no need to fight against yourself if there’s nothing to fight with. The way you do this is to activate your Parasympathetic nervous system. This cues you into the natural state in which you made your goals, your smart, wise, restrained, and contemplative side, as well as shuts down your fight or flight automatic no-thinking response. It allows you to make an informed decision without a mind with a thousand screaming rationalizations pressuring you.
DISCMAIMER
If you’re normally resistant to alternative crazes and new agey mumbo jumbo about the universe and secret visualization, this technique will give you a knee jerk high enough to break your nose. But, this technique isn’t about Tom Cruise magic granting your BMW wishes and the universe aligning with the vibrations of your genitals.
Pay attention to the scientific mechanisms of action and, most importantly, results (with all information, not just this). Don’t let your cultural assumptions turn you away from anything that doesn’t smell like American cheese and motor oil. The rest of us level headed superhumans will be leaving you in the dust.
The technique solely involves thought changes and an attitude shift. “The Secret” is bullshit. But not believing that thoughts alter the biochemical state in your brain and body is throwing out the orphan with the tax cuts. Your thoughts don’t cause neurons to fire, they are the neurons firing.
Thought shift can seem trivial and weird, but it is this technique is purely based on measurable neurobiological principles. And bottom line: it works with an incredibly higher rate of success and takes less mental energy and effort than traditional techniques. Win-Win. Bang-boom.
The Technique
Rationale of the Technique
The SNS is what gives your cravings teeth. Its your body forcing you into emergency alert mode, trying to get you to act immediately without thinking. Without it, the craving is painless and powerless. It’s just a fleeting thought. “I kind of want ice cream right now,” can be immediately and easily squashed with, “Nah, I’ll stick to the diet and continue being awesome.”
The key to beating cravings on a regular basis, even when you’re depressed, stressed, sleep deprived, low on energy and motivation is stopping the sympathetic nervous system response that the craving induces. You do this by activating the PNS. So instead of fighting yourself, it quells the craving and activates a mental state in which you can make a balanced rational decision, follow through without massive amounts of energy and motivation, and move on kicking ass and doing what you really want to do with your life. It gives power to your intelligence instead of your craving.
Here’s how you do this.
Step 1: When the craving arises, acknowledge it immediately.
Do not ignore the craving. Identify what your craving and prepare to confront it directly. Most people’s instinctive reaction is to immediately ignore, so you’ll have to make the conscious decision to stay focused for a few seconds. Acknowledge to yourself exactly what you’re craving, even mouth it silently or say it aloud.
Step 2: Acknowledge the objective that is conflicting with your craving, and allow both desires to coexist within you.
This skill is perhaps the most hard to grasp initially, but also the most quickly learned. Psychology would call this a compartmentalization strategy for dealing with cognitive dissonance. However, compartmentalization is usually seen as an unhealthy defense mechanism, this version (Super Human Compartmentalization) is extremely healthy and productive, in fact the mastery of this ability has been used in other studies as a metric for success and happiness.
These two thoughts are coming from different parts of your brain that don’t speak the same language or make decisions based on the same information. Trying to reconcile them is a losing battle that will surely involve a whole bunch of rationalization, higher spikes in SNS activity, and giving into the craving.
It’s key to allow both thoughts to coexist. Listen to both of them talk. Most importantly, listen to your craving talk. It will produce emotions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Acknowledge them. Give them value. Just don’t act on them. Listen curiously. You’ll hear the thoughts screaming and whining at you. “I want pizza. Give me pizza. I’m stressed. It would taste good. I’m sad. It would make me feel better.”
Or it will be a feeling. An unnerving tingling in your lips that doesn’t go away. A headache and a stiffness in your throat. Sometimes cravings are more ambiguos and sensory than straightforward thoughts you can listen to. In any case, pay as close attention to them as you can.
Step 3: Change the attitude you have towards the craving.
This is the most important aspect of this technique. For good reason, 99% of the time people will feel the tension and confusion that a craving creates within themselves, and immediately dislike the feeling. They treat it with annoyance and aversion because it’s causing them pain.
But what if you step back and look at what your craving is in isolation. It’s a part of you that is in pain, and is screaming out for relief in the only way it knows how. It’s a bit pathetic. It’s like a baby orphan that’s stubbed its toe. It’s crying out for toys or candy or a hug from it’s abandoned mother. But you can’t give it any of that. It’s diabetic, in a joyless nunnery, and if its mother came back you would lose your job. You have long term goals. So what do you do? You give it a hug, and rub its back, and tell it that everything is going to be OK. But most importantly, you show it affection, and let it cry out the pain. Eventually it will quiet down. It will either come to terms with the pain or the pain will subside. Babies are great analogies for cravings. They cry because they feel tension or pain. But they don’t understand it. Their screams are raw emotion or feeling. This is what you’re craving is experiencing.
If you yell at a baby for crying, it will only cry louder. If you sternly explain the long-term effects of crying to the baby, it will continue crying. If you hug the baby, rock it back and forth, and show it affection, it will cry for a little bit, and then it will always settle down.
FIGHT YOUR CRAVINGS WITH LOVE AND AFFECTION. Imagine they are a baby that you care for. Take a deep breath and give them a little boost of extra oxygen. Rub your shoulders and release some endorphins for them. Drink a warm glass of water, stretch, listen to relaxing music. Most of all, tell your craving that “everything is going to be OK.” Don’t address what its craving. Don’t tell it how it’s going to be fine without it. Just give it love and affection, and assure it that everything is going to be OK.
Step 4: Allow the craving to subside at it’s own pace
Continue with step three with some patience. Once you activate the loving PNS, your craving might only last five seconds or it might last a minute and a half. These times seem short but they may feel like an eternity at first. A craving will very rarely ever pass three minutes, unless it’s for an addictive drug like nicotine or pain pills. Even then though, it will likely not surpass four minutes. At first it might be hard to sustain this attitude, but very quickly your body will switch into this mode automatically by habit, as it releases plenty of benefits for your brain and body.
Your craving will die down. You’ll feel better about yourself. Your self confidence will increase. Your momentum for success will gain. And cravings of all kind will be even easier to beat the next time. the more often you use this technique and use it successfully. The more automatic and easy it becomes.
AFTER, the craving is fully subsided and you feel victorious and confident, then you can bring in the SNS motivation that Tony Robbins has always been telling you about as well as the distraction techniques. Go do something else, remember your goals, visualize your success, blah blah blah. It will all definitely help stave off the next craving. But the next one will come! And when it does, use this technique again. Especially when you’re tired, stressed, and the world is shitting on you. You will shit right back on it!
There’s LOTS more details, techniques, and information to learn to completely waterproof your Super Human Cravings Plan. So subscribe here for more email updates. I ONLY post amazing content, and it doesn’t come up too often, less than once a week, usually once a month, so don’t worry about spam or annoying stuff. Just worry about your foot getting sore from kicking so much more ass.
Read time: 10 minutes.
What you’ll get out of it:
- A simple mental repositioning that will likely double or triple your ability to beat cravings of all kinds
- A few chuckles about orphans amongst friends
Cravings suck.
Without cravings, we could quickly become be 5% body fat, get rich working from home, and take ten years of wrinkles off our face with one weird trick discovered by a mom (even if dermatologists hate her for it!). All we would have to do is make a decision, read the right eHow articles, follow the steps, and we’d be taking shirtless Facebook pics in the Caribbean in ninety days or less.
But if you clicked on this article, you’ve probably tried that a few times and it hasn’t worked out. You get cravings for cake and the first twenty times you resist and declare yourself a winner. Then your girlfriend breaks up with you, your dad tells you he wished you could’ve been a doctor like your brother, and there’s a sale on generic brand mint Oreos. All of a sudden you’re standing in front of the pantry at midnight, frantically scooping frosting into your mouth with all four fingers like a raccoon. (except a grainy cell phone video of this would not go viral and get someone to adopt you…. sorry large orphan readership…)
And cravings are a larger problem than just controlling your food intake, they are major players in drug addiction and drinking problems, they keep people smoking, they contribute to little dick moves in the office as well as embezzlement and corrupt government (the craving for power and money works very similarly in the brain to cravings for things like sugar and nicotine.)
And giving into cravings makes you feel like shit because you experience a loss of power and self-control. Over time, giving in again and again majorly depletes your confidence and self worth and contributes to more anxiety and fear in your life. If you have things you want to contribute to your family (sorry again large orphan readership) and the world, you can’t get anywhere near your potential with quickly decreasing self esteem and quickly decreasing health and brain power. Instead of leaving your mark on the world, you’re just trying to get through each day. And that sucks. So let’s fix it!
It’s fairly simple, and it doesn’t require Tony Robbins Motivation Porn or cutting everything not consumable by vegan mormons out of your life forever.
First we’ll get the neurological basics down: what’s causing you to crave, and why you cave in and give up.
Then i’ll give you a small mental switch you can use to immediately change your neurological chemistry to take the biological power away from the part of your brain that’s craving, and activate the smart, reasoned, rational part of your mind to calmly stop the cravings and continue on with your plans for kicking ass. That’s called Super Human Freedom.
Background:
By craving I mean a momentary desire for something that goes against your already standing plans and goals, and is strong enough to compel you to give into the desire, despite knowing that you don’t really want to. This technique will most often apply to things like food cravings, nicotine cravings, drug and alcohol cravings, TV cravings, and things like that. But it can also be applied to the craving to act angry, the craving to indulge in self destructive thoughts, the craving to distract yourself from doing something that scares you, and the craving to do the selfish wrong thing when you know what and how to do right.
All sorts of different parts of the brain may be in charge of craving different things. The basal ganglia is famous for making you insane when it gets a trigger for a reward and the reward doesn't come. The insula has been pegged specifically for nicotine addiction. Several more parts are especially susceptible to dopaminergic spike cravings, alcohol habits, sugar cravings, etc. But what’s most important is the effect these cravings have on your nervous system. You have two parts of your autonomic nervous system.
Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS): "fight or flight," spikes when you need to make a fast momentary decision or motor movement. It excels in its speed and reflexiveness. It’s automatic and non-thinking. When its a misplaced reaction, its often not rational. (spoiler alert: all of your PNS powers work against you when your cake craving lights it up like a christmas tree)
Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS): "rest and digest," spikes when your healing, resting, growing, synthesizing information, contemplating, creating, etc. anything when you’re relaxed and not pressed for time. (spoiler alert 2: activating this will allow you to beat your craving)
*The two systems work inversely in tandem. If you stimulate one, you calm the other down, and vice versa.
A cravings follows this path
1. One part of your brain, in its limited knowledge, thinks that it needs something, and that what it needs is vital to your health and homeostasis.
2. It sends out a small signal, asking the rest of your brain to acquire what it needs.
3. This registers as a thought or a small feeling. “Hmm. I could go for something salty.” “Hmm, I could for that thing the other orphans are doing these days where you mix some tylenol PM into your smack before injecting intravenously.”
4. Your brain part doesn’t get what it wants. Because you (another part of your brain, like the pre-frontal cortex that knows about the outside world and your greater goals and how to be happy) say, “nah... I’m on a diet and on track for employee of the month if I keep my shit together.”
5. The part of your brain that sent out the request for the chemical, doesn’t understand employee of the month, or cholesterol, or likely even time or language. So it thinks that the body is in trouble because it can’t get what it needs. So it activates the “fight or flight response” in the nervous system. This changes everything. All of the sudden, you REALLY want something salty. You develop anxiety about not having it. You think about all the ways you could acquire it. Your whole brain and body convinces that small part of you that wants to stick to your diet that it won’t hurt, it’s just one, and it feels stressed out, and it will go right back on the diet afterwards, it just needs some salt NOW!
6. Now you have two different directions you can go to beat the craving. The common one that everyone uses, and the one that smart people who read this blog and achieve their goals use.
What Most People Do
If you’re going to be successful and not just give in, you remind yourself of all the reasons why you want to stay on your diet. You get motivated. You get determined. You get amped up and tell yourself that you’re a strong willed voluptuous african american woman who, despite society being against them and “all the haters” will prevail with her dream of a talk show for women. You visualize yourself in your swimsuit and you think of that $50 McDonald’s Gift Card. You get your entire body involved, your heart beats faster and your pupils contract, and you’re focused and determined and in the zone!
Then you distract yourself. You put your mind towards something else to block out the craving. And low and behold. You don’t give in. You are a genius.
OR
You try the same thing again. But now your tired, your blood sugar is low, you haven’t had enough sleep, you’re stressed from work and you’re depressed. You try and get yourself motivated to beat the craving but you just don’t have the energy. You cave. And you feel like shit afterwards. And all of your motivational success story is halted. Enjoy your hour long masturbation sesh to pictures of kids with siblings and parents. Also enjoy the nuns whacking your dick with a ruler when they catch you.
What’s going on? Why Do You Always Fail?
When you motivate yourself out of giving into the craving, you are re-enflaming your Sympathetic Nervous System and trying to make it work for another part of your brain. Your working against yourself and your pitting one part of your brain’s demands against another. It’s like Israel and Palestine (i’ll let you decide which is the pre-frontal cortex and which is the less evolved turban wearing craver terrorist) trying to occupy the same territory. The craving started by lighting up the SNS, then your having another part of the brain light up the SNS even more, but ask for something different. It’s a confusing and high metabolic process. You’ll notice your racing thoughts, your confusion, and your inner conflicts from this type of response.
Whether or not you succeed isn’t dependent on what thoughts you think and what decisions you make, (because you’ve done the same exact thing ten times successfully and now it’s failed). It’s dependent on what type of biological cocktail your working with at the time. Sadness, stress, sleep deficiency, etc. all can be managed and avoided but they will happen eventually, and then you will fail.
So what do you do?
You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight it with water. You shut down your entire Sympathetic Nervous System and kill the craving. There’s no need to fight against yourself if there’s nothing to fight with. The way you do this is to activate your Parasympathetic nervous system. This cues you into the natural state in which you made your goals, your smart, wise, restrained, and contemplative side, as well as shuts down your fight or flight automatic no-thinking response. It allows you to make an informed decision without a mind with a thousand screaming rationalizations pressuring you.
DISCMAIMER
If you’re normally resistant to alternative crazes and new agey mumbo jumbo about the universe and secret visualization, this technique will give you a knee jerk high enough to break your nose. But, this technique isn’t about Tom Cruise magic granting your BMW wishes and the universe aligning with the vibrations of your genitals.
Pay attention to the scientific mechanisms of action and, most importantly, results (with all information, not just this). Don’t let your cultural assumptions turn you away from anything that doesn’t smell like American cheese and motor oil. The rest of us level headed superhumans will be leaving you in the dust.
The technique solely involves thought changes and an attitude shift. “The Secret” is bullshit. But not believing that thoughts alter the biochemical state in your brain and body is throwing out the orphan with the tax cuts. Your thoughts don’t cause neurons to fire, they are the neurons firing.
Thought shift can seem trivial and weird, but it is this technique is purely based on measurable neurobiological principles. And bottom line: it works with an incredibly higher rate of success and takes less mental energy and effort than traditional techniques. Win-Win. Bang-boom.
The Technique
Rationale of the Technique
The SNS is what gives your cravings teeth. Its your body forcing you into emergency alert mode, trying to get you to act immediately without thinking. Without it, the craving is painless and powerless. It’s just a fleeting thought. “I kind of want ice cream right now,” can be immediately and easily squashed with, “Nah, I’ll stick to the diet and continue being awesome.”
The key to beating cravings on a regular basis, even when you’re depressed, stressed, sleep deprived, low on energy and motivation is stopping the sympathetic nervous system response that the craving induces. You do this by activating the PNS. So instead of fighting yourself, it quells the craving and activates a mental state in which you can make a balanced rational decision, follow through without massive amounts of energy and motivation, and move on kicking ass and doing what you really want to do with your life. It gives power to your intelligence instead of your craving.
Here’s how you do this.
Step 1: When the craving arises, acknowledge it immediately.
Do not ignore the craving. Identify what your craving and prepare to confront it directly. Most people’s instinctive reaction is to immediately ignore, so you’ll have to make the conscious decision to stay focused for a few seconds. Acknowledge to yourself exactly what you’re craving, even mouth it silently or say it aloud.
Step 2: Acknowledge the objective that is conflicting with your craving, and allow both desires to coexist within you.
This skill is perhaps the most hard to grasp initially, but also the most quickly learned. Psychology would call this a compartmentalization strategy for dealing with cognitive dissonance. However, compartmentalization is usually seen as an unhealthy defense mechanism, this version (Super Human Compartmentalization) is extremely healthy and productive, in fact the mastery of this ability has been used in other studies as a metric for success and happiness.
These two thoughts are coming from different parts of your brain that don’t speak the same language or make decisions based on the same information. Trying to reconcile them is a losing battle that will surely involve a whole bunch of rationalization, higher spikes in SNS activity, and giving into the craving.
It’s key to allow both thoughts to coexist. Listen to both of them talk. Most importantly, listen to your craving talk. It will produce emotions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Acknowledge them. Give them value. Just don’t act on them. Listen curiously. You’ll hear the thoughts screaming and whining at you. “I want pizza. Give me pizza. I’m stressed. It would taste good. I’m sad. It would make me feel better.”
Or it will be a feeling. An unnerving tingling in your lips that doesn’t go away. A headache and a stiffness in your throat. Sometimes cravings are more ambiguos and sensory than straightforward thoughts you can listen to. In any case, pay as close attention to them as you can.
Step 3: Change the attitude you have towards the craving.
This is the most important aspect of this technique. For good reason, 99% of the time people will feel the tension and confusion that a craving creates within themselves, and immediately dislike the feeling. They treat it with annoyance and aversion because it’s causing them pain.
But what if you step back and look at what your craving is in isolation. It’s a part of you that is in pain, and is screaming out for relief in the only way it knows how. It’s a bit pathetic. It’s like a baby orphan that’s stubbed its toe. It’s crying out for toys or candy or a hug from it’s abandoned mother. But you can’t give it any of that. It’s diabetic, in a joyless nunnery, and if its mother came back you would lose your job. You have long term goals. So what do you do? You give it a hug, and rub its back, and tell it that everything is going to be OK. But most importantly, you show it affection, and let it cry out the pain. Eventually it will quiet down. It will either come to terms with the pain or the pain will subside. Babies are great analogies for cravings. They cry because they feel tension or pain. But they don’t understand it. Their screams are raw emotion or feeling. This is what you’re craving is experiencing.
If you yell at a baby for crying, it will only cry louder. If you sternly explain the long-term effects of crying to the baby, it will continue crying. If you hug the baby, rock it back and forth, and show it affection, it will cry for a little bit, and then it will always settle down.
FIGHT YOUR CRAVINGS WITH LOVE AND AFFECTION. Imagine they are a baby that you care for. Take a deep breath and give them a little boost of extra oxygen. Rub your shoulders and release some endorphins for them. Drink a warm glass of water, stretch, listen to relaxing music. Most of all, tell your craving that “everything is going to be OK.” Don’t address what its craving. Don’t tell it how it’s going to be fine without it. Just give it love and affection, and assure it that everything is going to be OK.
Step 4: Allow the craving to subside at it’s own pace
Continue with step three with some patience. Once you activate the loving PNS, your craving might only last five seconds or it might last a minute and a half. These times seem short but they may feel like an eternity at first. A craving will very rarely ever pass three minutes, unless it’s for an addictive drug like nicotine or pain pills. Even then though, it will likely not surpass four minutes. At first it might be hard to sustain this attitude, but very quickly your body will switch into this mode automatically by habit, as it releases plenty of benefits for your brain and body.
Your craving will die down. You’ll feel better about yourself. Your self confidence will increase. Your momentum for success will gain. And cravings of all kind will be even easier to beat the next time. the more often you use this technique and use it successfully. The more automatic and easy it becomes.
AFTER, the craving is fully subsided and you feel victorious and confident, then you can bring in the SNS motivation that Tony Robbins has always been telling you about as well as the distraction techniques. Go do something else, remember your goals, visualize your success, blah blah blah. It will all definitely help stave off the next craving. But the next one will come! And when it does, use this technique again. Especially when you’re tired, stressed, and the world is shitting on you. You will shit right back on it!
There’s LOTS more details, techniques, and information to learn to completely waterproof your Super Human Cravings Plan. So subscribe here for more email updates. I ONLY post amazing content, and it doesn’t come up too often, less than once a week, usually once a month, so don’t worry about spam or annoying stuff. Just worry about your foot getting sore from kicking so much more ass.
No comments:
Post a Comment