I have observed that telling someone not to do something often proves insufficient to stop that behaviour because the brain seems to focus on the action involved: whether or not it should or should not do something. To help the brain we need to give it something else to focus on. We have to replace thinking about the undesired action with thinking about the desired action. If we don’t direct our thinking then we tend to remain stuck thinking about the undesired action and as a result will probably continue to indulge in it because at some point that undesired action probably gave pleasurable benefits. Those benefits still remain and we will return to the pleasure that they give us unless we can replace it with new pleasures and new benefits or else think starkly about the long-term damage that it causes for us.

If we want to change a behaviour and find it difficult to initiate the change and follow through consistently, then to create momentum we need to spend 80% of our thinking on what we stand to lose if we don’t change and 20% of our thinking on what we will gain. Humans have a natural predisposition to shun risk and danger and as a result experiencing it, or coming close to experiencing it, gives a high stimulus for taking preventative action. We often revert back to existing behaviours because of the short-term benefits that they bring because they seem easy to do and because they don’t seem risky or fatal. We know them well and have survived with them already and often for a long-time. Possible future gains have less impact because we continuously prove in the present that we can live without them. Possible gains have appeal as a ‘nice to have’ but make for a very weak call to action. Possible losses have a much bigger impact because we really don’t want to end up worse off than our current situation because that really hurts. Once we have secured something we will make a much greater effort to protect that one thing. We will make much less effort to gain something new and non-essential. We also don’t want to end up the worst in our given group because that increases the risk of extinction (please see the separate article on Extinction of the Least Fit for more on this).

When you have discovered within yourself, or with someone or something else, some behaviour that you want to change then consider it in the following manner:

• Take a short while to think about what you do not want to do and then think very long and thoroughly over what you want to do instead. Initially starting with the opposite behaviour makes sense but might not prove sufficient. For example, if you want to quit smoking then saying to yourself, ‘Ok, in that case I want the new behaviour of not smoking,’ will almost certainly not prove sufficient because you have not replaced the ‘smoking’ part of the focus.
• Think about the benefits that you now get from your current undesired behaviour and ask yourself how you could get these same benefits in another way.
• It can help to go deeper into personal introspection and find out what about you causes you to want to spend time pursuing ultimately destructive distractions. This often derives from frustrations created due to an inability to fulfil your desires.
• Continue to think about the benefits and pleasures that you still want to have and list new ways with which you might find better replacements. I emphasize the word ‘might’ so that you don’t analyse too soon and block up your creative flow. Once you have some decent options decide which replacement behaviour you will adopt.
• Next think about what you will gain from changing your behaviour and list these things.
• Finally list everything that you risk and stand to lose if you don’t change the behaviour. Get very emotive about this as a great fear of loss proves highly motivating and can often help to get you out of any rut that you might have sunk into.

Once you have all of this information then come up with negative affirmations with the predominant focus on what you will lose and what replacement behaviour you will now develop. Begin with including all of the information on the old behaviour, newly desired behaviour, the gain and the loss.

For example:

• I want to stop smoking and I want to take up healthy alternatives that bring the relaxing and social benefits that I now have. I want to increase my life expectancy, save money, and stop having stinking breath and clothes. I don’t want to die prematurely from some horrendous disease like cancer.

Incidentally, I don’t smoke but I have read that smoking might cause feelings of pleasure in the rather perverse manner that deep breathing from inhalation helps people to relax. I say perverse because using smoking as the medium for that causes long-term damage to your lungs and eventually makes breathing even more difficult (and even impossible). Plenty of information on the health benefits of inhaling deeply, holding the breath and then exhaling exists so check it out if it interests you. Taking this approach you can get the same calming benefit of smoking whilst having the doubly good effect of improving your overall health.

We can now refined the long-winded explanation into something more easily usable, for example:

• Because I choose not to die prematurely from smoking, then when I get the urge to light up, I instead I take a pause and inhale, hold and exhale very deeply 5-times.

The above example still seems long-winded so you might trim it down so that it has the same import but in a punchier fashion:

• To eliminate premature death from smoking, I use a deep breathing cycle to feel good

Notice that this places the most focus upon the loss that will occur if not carried out and then immediately states the replacement behaviour as the new thing to focus on. At this point, we have ended up with a short and succinct negative affirmation that encapsulates a lot of thinking and ideas in a short and efficient and effective manner. Keep this affirmation to hand and affirm it first thing in the morning and at other times during the day if necessary.

Please be careful not to construct your thoughts so as to generate paralysing fear – that really doesn’t help. Just have simple reminders along the lines of, ‘If I don’t want x then I must do y.’ Never ever bad mouth yourself and so always view yourself as capable and resourceful and as a person who always builds more capability and resourcefulness.

Benefits

For centuries people have made edicts about what to do and what not to do. Commandments that say what positive action to take usually prove easier to keep. Those that say what not to do get broken quickly (because they often go against human instinct and common thinking such as, ‘Why not? What will happen if I do? It’s my right and I’ll do as I please,’ etc) and to break a rule instantly identifies the wrong-doer as a ‘sinner’. After you have sinned once then it becomes a case of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and breaking the rules becomes even easier. A focus on the positive behaviour keeps people focused on the right thing to do. Plus if you make a mistake you don’t feel cast out as sinner/loser/hopeless incompetent for just one aberration and so will likely quickly return to the better behaviour.

A person who dedicates themselves to the positive option will more likely feel genuine remorse for not carrying it out and will self-regulate their behaviour to reduce the chances of it happening again. This happens because they ‘own’ the behaviour. Most people want to do the right thing and have a good sense of right from wrong. However, most people hate it when others tell them what not to do. Telling people what not to do suggests that they don’t have the competence to know or to carry out the right thing to do and most people protest deeply against insinuations of inadequacy. By focusing on the positive behaviour, with a reminder of what happens if that doesn’t happen, then people will tend to do the right thing and self-regulate their own behaviour. If someone identifies himself or herself as ‘a person who acts with fidelity’ then they will feel their own personal disgust if they prove false to that claim. Whereas without positive direction a person might not align themselves to the path of fidelity, honesty or whichever virtue we care to select. If they focus on the negative then life becomes a continued series of decisions about the forbidden thing and eventually, perhaps in a moment of weakness, they will break the rule. Then they have an experience as a rule breaker and they will begin to identify themselves in that way accordingly which makes rule breaking ever easier and builds up barriers to behaving well in the future.

I sometimes feel dismayed that centuries of effort into attempting to control human behaviour have not cottoned onto this simple aspect of human nature and used it to the advantage of everyone. Instead we are forbidden too often over too many things and so rarely encouraged to behave well.

Conclusion

Simply decide on the negative aspects and associate bad results to it and identify it as something to worry, fear of feel guilty about. Next, use the emotional impact of the negative forecasting to focus on the positive result wanted and the means by which to create it – hence creating replacement behaviour for the old behaviour. Initially you will think often of the forbidden thing as you depended upon it for a long time to generate certain feelings and to satisfy certain needs but if your desire for change is strong (and if not then load up further on generating negative scenarios) then you will remember the negatives and feel bad or confused and then you will think of the positives and enact your replacement behaviour. If the replacement behaviour does not prove sufficiently strong at the start of this process then introduce supporting rewards until the pleasure link and habit of indulging in the old, unwanted behaviour has passed.

If you do not use this method then you will continue to focus on the problem and on the wrong behaviour, even if you stick, “Don’t do this” in front of it. The bad behaviours will stay because the brain still focuses on it. Use the inherent focusing power of the brain and simply direct its attention better. Given sufficient reasons to change both negative and positive, and new behaviours to commence the brain will mostly direct itself so that in the end the new behaviour becomes second nature. High achievers and highly effective people focus the mass of their thinking and effort on the solution and not on the problem. This technique does exactly that on a micro-level, on a moment to moment basis when you have to make decisions over how you feel and how to act. This method gives a very, very simple and yet highly effective means of changing behaviour almost instantaneously. Since all great things come from the steadfast and consistent effort to solve small things then this single tool of focusing on the positive, desired outcome will have a massive impact on all of your thinking and actions.