How many times do we pick up that cigarette after 4 days of not smoking, or eat that whole slice of chocolate cake, and then two more when we promised ourself that we would only take a slither?

I know I have struggled with a number of addictions in my life; from alcohol, cigarettes and of course… relationships. I would continually repeat the behaviour that I knew was bad for me. And burn a lot of energy beating myself up in the process.

That was until I realised that this behaviour was a merely a program playing out in a cycle to cover up my feelings of emptiness in regards to love, support and purpose. When I reprogrammed this cycle and started providing myself with love, support and purpose something powerful happened..

The addictions were gone!

In this article I am going to show you how you can get rid of any addictions or self defeating behaviours that are holding you back by reprogramming yourself to provide love, support, purpose and fulfilment from within.

The Urge to Avoid Pain Creates the Cycle of Addiction

Perhaps you continually say “Yes” when you need to say “No”, and haven’t started doing this yet despite how much you are continually damaging yourself by saying ”Yes” to people, choices and actions that are destroying you.

Our emotions are powerful, and they are either neutral or experiencing pleasure or pain. As human beings we have been conditioned to avoid pain at all costs. The problem is avoiding pain without dealing with it leads to creating more pain.

Let me explain.

The craving for a cigarette, a piece of chocolate cake, or the neediness for love or approval from a specific person is felt as pain.

The craving creates an emotion whereby rather than being appreciative of ‘what you do have’ right here, right now – your focus is on ‘what you don’t have’ right here, right now.

The emptiness of ‘not having’ creates the feeling ‘if I have this thing that I am craving the pain will go away.’

The instinctual response is to ‘go for’ this thing or person that you have the craving for, and this intense urge takes control of your actions.

When you give into this urge you only feel short term relief, there is no real lasting peace or fulfilment, you still feel empty on the inside, and the craving will inevitably reproduce again and the cycle will continue.

This is the cycle of addiction.

It is important to understand that addictions are emotion based. It is your unfulfilled and ‘empty’ emotions that are writhing in pain, urging you to give into anything that will provide momentary relief.

We are all scared of pain, until we realise that pain is a perfect opportunity to apply mindfulness, heal and grow into a much more fulfilled and solid sense of self.

Pain can be Mindfully Embraced Rather Than Avoided

When we start embracing our pain and transforming it, a powerful change starts to take place in our brain, in the cells of our body, and we literally re-wire our emotions and our choices. We form and create new patterns that end up being effortless. Over time the struggle with the particular addiction simply no longer exists.

The only way we can create this process is by staying present with our emotions and working through them, rather than avoiding them.

How do we do that?

If you have had enough of repeating the actions that you know are not serving you, I’m going to give you a little exercise to do.

Merely reading this and being cognitively aware of it, won’t help you.

Making the commitment to apply it and to keep applying it will.

Five Steps to Releasing the Behaviour That isn’t Contributing to who You want to be

STEP ONE:

Choose the number #1 thing that if you stopped doing it – It would positively impact your life the most.

STEP TWO:

Now make the decision that you want to change this behaviour.

Write out a declaration to yourself.

“I (Your name) now declare that I am in the process of changing (the behaviour) as I am aware it is not contributing to who I want to be …(date)”

(Feel free to use your own language this is just an example)

STEP THREE:

Now write “I am aware that when I do (the behaviour) I am experiencing the following feelings of emptiness in regard to what I don’t believe I have in my life now.”

Now remember the feeling of the craving, take your awareness inside yourself and fully feel into and embrace the feelings of emptiness and ‘what I don’t have’ that is creating your craving…

Really feel into it. You can do this by bringing up a memory of the last time you felt ‘empty’, go into this feeling, literally drop into it and become ‘at one’ with it. Now what is it about?

These empty feelings will be to do with feeling a lack of love, support, fulfilment or purpose.

Write as much detail as you possibly can about these empty feelings.

Know that you can never get the relief of these feelings from your addiction. You need to be able to provide this for yourself. It has to come from within.

STEP FOUR:

Now write down “In order to fill myself and heal these feelings of ‘what I don’t have’ I can and will fill myself up with all of the appreciation of ‘what I do have’ right now.”

Okay, this is where you need to be creative. And with all ‘prepaving’…(manifestation term for creating an energy that you are going to flow into and become) you may literally have to make it up.

The great thing is, your emotional body knows no difference between what you are imagining, what you choose to tell yourself, and what is actually real.

In fact what ‘becomes real’ is always what you decide to think about, feel and believe NOW.

So examples of filling yourself up with what ‘you do have’ are:

Craving for Cigarettes

• The ability to exercise
• The joy of better health

Craving for Chocolate Cake

• Loving myself by preparing healthy food
• Enjoying feeling light, free and healthy

Craving to get love and approval from someone hurting me

• Knowing I have the ability to grant love and approval to myself
• Loving myself enough to say “No”
• Knowing I have real and supportive people who do supply genuine love
• Knowing I can create a real love partner one day who does supply genuine love
• There are many ways I can source out support to grant myself love and self-approval, which will then create ‘more of that’ in my life.

With your list brainstorm and write as many positives as you can in regard to ‘how you will fill yourself up’ when the next craving strikes.

You may have realised in Step Three that your craving is not only to do with reversing the literal craving, that it may also be to do with filling yourself up with positive feelings in regard to any area of your life, and absolutely needs to counteract the empty feelings you discovered in Step Three.

STEP FIVE:

When the craving strikes, either mentally tell yourself your new story of ‘what you do have’, or write it down again repetitively or play yourself a tape of your own voice speaking these points repetitively.

It is very important to focus on the positive feeling of these words.

Initially that may be tough, but it will get easier, and more and more powerful.

Keep doing this process until the pain of the craving stops.

Repeat it any time that the craving reappears.

Know that what you are doing is effectively reprogramming your neuron pathways and cellular body to become the new program. You will then have effectively filled the hole where the emptiness was, and because there is no emptiness, there will be no more craving.

Be aware that the addiction may be very powerful. The first few times that you go to break free from the addiction it will kick, scream and fight. It will throw a tantrum because it has been used to getting its own way…

The pain will hit you hard and come at you with intensity that may feel like literal panic or even dread.

What You Can Do If You Are Struggling

If you can’t keep your focus on creating the new program of ‘what you do have’, because the intensity of the craving is so bad, then just be with the pain. Lie down if you can, place your hands on your stomach, focus on feeling the pain and just breathe.

It’s very important to NOT THINK. Don’t add any stories to the pain, don’t give it power. Just fully feel it, be with (knowing it will pass, that you’re not avoiding it, and it won’t kill you) and focus on “A breath in, a breath out” (say this to yourself) and breathe in and out as slowly and as deeply as you can.

I promise you the pain will pass.

Do this the first few times the craving hits and don’t cave in to the craving, and when the pain feels less intense you can check in to see whether or not you are able to start focusing on and reprogramming yourself with the ‘what I do have’ information you are granting yourself, which will speed up your recovery even more.

Before you know it, if you keep this process up consistently and diligently the emptiness will go, and the cravings will subside, and you will be rid of your addiction, be aligned with ‘what you do have’ and start manifesting those things as solid reality into your life.

If you give in don’t beat yourself up… Continue to support yourself and tell yourself you will be stronger next time.

If you feel that you can’t change your focus and your ‘story’ yourself – that’s ok! All of us, at times need support and help and I would love to show you a way to start your healing journey by inviting you to sign up for my free 16 Day Recovery Course here.  It includes a set of ebooks and an invitation to a free Healing Workshop so you can experience a Quanta Freedom Healing for yourself.

Do you understand that the craving was granting you the pain to find your emptiness, rectify it and get aligned with creating and experiencing the life you were always born to create?

That’s the truth…