Kicking The Habit

Have you ever found yourself doing something over and over again, even when you know it’s not helping you? Maybe you reach for your ‘phone the moment you wake up in the morning, or snack late at night even though you’re not hungry. These automatic, unconscious behaviours, some of which are resourceful, some unresourceful are what we call habits.

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Habits are patterns, installed at the unconscious level, which play out on autopilot, like a scratched record, day in and day out.

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Understanding how habits work is one of the most powerful steps you can take in shaping the life you want. If you are considering learning Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), you are about to gain tools that allow you to do exactly that, to take control of your unconscious patterns and design more resourceful habits that serve you.

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Habits are learned behaviours that become automatic through repetition. They can be physical actions, thought patterns, emotional responses or even beliefs. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Habits shape your identity, influence your results and determine how you experience life.

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The simplest way to understand a habit is as a loop. Something triggers it, you carry out a behaviour, and you experience a result. For example, feeling stressed might trigger you to scroll social media (the behaviour), giving you a short-lived sense of distraction (the result). Over time, this pattern becomes wired into your unconscious, so you no longer think consciously before you do it.

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That’s how powerful habits are, they bypass your conscious intention. If you have no awareness of how to interrupt and redirect them, you will keep getting the same results, no matter how much will power you throw at it. Kicking a habit has absolutely nothing to do with will power and everything to do with breaking the looping strategies that are running in your unconscious mind.

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Why do you have habits in the first place? Your brain loves efficiency. From an evolutionary standpoint, habits helped your ancestors survive. They allowed the brain to offload repeated tasks like preparing food or finding shelter so it could focus energy on more urgent threats.

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Today, habits still serve this function. They automate your routines so you don’t need to make constant decisions. You don’t think about how to brush your teeth or how to drive to work because those patterns are stored unconsciously. Habits free up cognitive space.

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The challenge arises when the habits that once served you well, no longer do. That nightly glass of wine to unwind might have started as a way to relax. Over time, it can become a crutch that affects your energy, sleep and motivation. NLP gives you a way to identify these patterns and update them into something far more resourceful.

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You already have resourceful and unresourceful habits in your life. A resourceful habit supports your goals, values and daily wellbeing. An unresourceful habit takes you away from what you want or who you aim to be.

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Examples of resourceful habits might be exercising regularly, drinking enough water, practising how you notice fulfilment each day, listening attentively during conversations, being present and starting your day with a clear intention.

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Examples of unresourceful habits might be procrastinating on important tasks, interrupting others while they speak, replaying unhelpful self-talk in your mind, biting your nails or comfort eating when you feeling bored or anxious.

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The key distinction between a resourceful and an unresourceful habit is does it support your desired outcomes or does it drain your energy, motivation or confidence?

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Let’s now consider how habits are formed. In NLP, we understand that habits reside in your internal programming at the unconscious level. These are the beliefs, triggers, and strategies which run behind the scenes of your behaviour.

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Each habit begins with a trigger, a cue in your internal or external environment. The trigger initiates a sequence of internal processes and actions which in NLP is known as a strategy. The output of a strategy is a resulting behaviour. If the result feels good, even for a short period of time, your unconscious mind stores the pattern.

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Every time you act on a habit, you are reinforcing a neurological pathway. Over time, that path becomes the default route. This is why habits feel hard to break, it’s not about laziness or lack of discipline, it’s about neural wiring.

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Here’s the exciting part in NLP. We know that habits are programmed, so it follows that they can be reprogrammed.

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One of the cornerstones of NLP is the concept of strategies. A strategy in NLP is the specific sequence of internal representations and responses you run to achieve a certain outcome. For example, you may have a strategy for making a decision, falling in love, feeling motivated or indeed for procrastinating.

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Let’s say your habit is procrastination. Using NLP, you can elicit the exact steps you go through that lead you to put things off. Perhaps it starts with an image of a task, followed by internal dialogue about how difficult it will be, then a feeling of stress, and finally, the urge to check your phone. This is a strategy, just not a resourceful one.

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Once you identify the strategy, you can interrupt it and install a new one. Imagine replacing that procrastination sequence with one that starts with a visual of completing the task, a motivating inner voice, a sense of energy and a desire to take the first step. That’s how you shift habits at the unconscious level.

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A powerful NLP approach for kicking the habit is the pattern interrupt. This involves disrupting the automatic sequence your unconscious mind follows before the habit completes. By breaking the loop and preventing the strategy from running through to completion, you create the space for a new choice.

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Pattern interrupts can be both subtle and bold. A subtle interrupt might be changing the physical environment, for example moving your workspace to a different location. A bold interrupt might be doing something completely unexpected when the urge to follow the old habit arises, like clapping your hands loudly when you catch yourself starting to complain.

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The intention of a pattern interrupt is to create a moment of awareness in the midst of automation. Once you interrupt the old pattern, you can immediately run a more resourceful one.

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If you feel that you are ready to shift unhelpful habits, here are some simple steps you can take immediately using NLP principles. Follow this process today and let us know your outcomes:

1. Identify the Habit

Choose one habit you would like to change and be specific. Instead of saying “I want to stop being lazy,” specify how you define your lazy habit, it might be, “I want to stop scrolling social media for an hour after dinner.”

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2. Uncover the Strategy

Ask yourself:

• What triggers the habit?

• What thoughts, images or feelings come up before it starts?

• What action do I take next?

• What result or feeling do I get from it?

Mapping this sequence gives you insight into how your unconscious mind is running the strategy that creates the habitual action.

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3. Interrupt the Pattern

Decide how you will disrupt the loop. You might stand up, change your breathing, shout “Stop!” in your head, or physically move to a different room. The more unexpected, the more powerful the result will be.

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4. Install a New Strategy

Choose a new behaviour that supports your goal. Run it through your mind like a mental rehearsal. Imagine the trigger, then see yourself responding in a new way, with ease, confidence and alignment with who you want to be.

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5. Reinforce the New Pattern

Habits need repetition to become installed at the unconscious level. Each time you run the new strategy, you are establishing a new neurological pathway. With consistency, this new behaviour will become your default, a new, more resourceful habit.

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Traditional approaches to habit change often focus only on the behaviour without addressing the unconscious processes that drive it. NLP goes deeper. It works with the internal images, self-talk, beliefs and emotions that form the foundation of your actions.

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Rather than fighting the old habit, you retrain your unconscious mind to follow a new map, one that leads to more freedom, confidence and success. NLP meets you where you are, then gives you the tools to shift in the direction of your highest potential.

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You don’t have to live with habits that hold you back and keep you stuck in unresourceful behaviours. With the principles of NLP, you can become the architect of your own mind, releasing patterns that no longer serve you and replacing them with ones that lead to your most desired outcomes.

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Every habit you change opens a new possibility and gives you choice for a new way of thinking and a new way of being. Whether you are just starting your journey or deepening your practice, learning NLP offers you the clarity and control to take charge of your unconscious mind and create the kind of life you truly want.

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Now is the perfect time to kick the habit and step into a more powerful version of yourself.

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