Wouldn’t you like to know how to stop a bad habit? Have you ever heard the phrase, “you get more of what you focus on?” I’m sure you have because it’s a popular phrase that is an accurate description of how the mind works. For example if I were to ask you to remember a favourite holiday experience and as you recall it now I could get you to focus on more and more aspects by asking what specifically did you see, hear, smell, taste and feel in the experience.

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So what happens is that the mind focus’s on something and goes in that direction; rather like a guided missile. Of course not being perfect enlightened beings just yet our minds acquire unwanted habits.

How to Stop Bad Habits

You can use proven techniques such as NLP’s ‘Swish Pattern’ to re-direct your brain away from the unwanted focus, towards a new direction.

The ‘Swish Pattern’ was discovered by using Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to model what people do inside their mind. So the fact is you actually do “Swish’s” already! The Swish Pattern Technique will give you the know-how to break habits in a powerful, ecological way.

This ‘away from X, towards Y’ principle creates a very useful motivational strategy known as a propulsion system. The Swish Pattern makes full use of this principle to generate quick and effective results.

One of the great things about this approach is that it encourages generative change. Remedial change is where you fix problem X, such as a phobia of dogs, and that is that.

Generative change on the other hand generalises. Because the Swish Pattern utilises Self-Image as part of the technique you can look forward to greater self-esteem in other areas of your life.

To clarify what I mean imagine you used ‘the swish’ to resolve the bad habit of feeling low self-esteem when asserting yourself with your partner. Because of the generative aspect of the technique you would probably be pleased to discover feelings of greater self-esteem in other areas of your life too, such as when communicating with a challenging work colleague.

You know, your mind learns quickly! The Swish Pattern makes use of the Half Second Rule principle which allows your mind to be reprogrammed in such a way as to make the change stick and become automatic! Just imagine that, no need to keep consciously remembering to focus on the new direction. Once you’ve done the Swish Pattern you will have re-wired your brain and the new habit will be on auto-pilot!