If you’re struggling with an emotional addiction to shoplifting, there are three key principles from “Evolve Your Brain” by Dr. Joe Dispenza that can help you overcome it.
The first principle is “a matter of choosing.” You have the power to direct your thoughts and actions in a positive direction. By recognizing that you have control over your behavior, you can make a conscious choice to stop shoplifting and take responsibility for your actions. To implement this principle, you’ll need to cultivate self-awareness and a positive mindset.
The second principle is “a brief interruption…for now.” This principle involves interrupting your habitual thought patterns and behaviors by introducing a new stimulus or activity. When the urge to shoplift arises, you can interrupt the pattern by engaging in a different activity or thought. This helps to disrupt the automatic patterns of behavior and create space for intentional decision-making.
The third principle is “mental rehearsal and the art of competition.” This principle involves using mental imagery and positive self-talk to rewire the brain and create new patterns of behavior. You can practice visualizing yourself refraining from shoplifting and feeling proud of your ability to resist the urge. By repeatedly visualizing positive outcomes, you can gradually create new neural pathways that support your desired behavior.
To overcome your addiction to shoplifting, you can use these principles in the following ways:
- Choose to break the habit: Make a conscious choice to stop shoplifting and commit to a new, positive behavior. This involves developing self-awareness, taking responsibility for your actions, and cultivating a positive mindset. Your choice must be to both stop shoplifting AND to choose some beneficial activity and/or a positive thought to replace shoplifting.
- Interrupt the pattern: When the urge to shoplift arises, interrupt the pattern by engaging in a different activity or thought. Recognize the triggers and patterns that lead to shoplifting and deliberately interrupt them with a new, positive activity or thought.
- Practice mental rehearsal: Bring to mind something that normally triggers you, imagine that the trigger is happening, and then see yourself replacing that “trigger thought” or “trigger situation” with a positive replacement. By repeatedly visualizing positive outcomes, you can create new neural pathways that support your desired behavior.
When you practice mental rehearsal, you use your imagination to visualize yourself engaging in positive behaviors and experiencing positive outcomes. This process activates the same areas of the brain that are involved in actual physical activity, leading to the strengthening of neural connections between the brain and the muscles involved in the behavior.
Additionally, mental rehearsal can stimulate the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, which are associated with positive emotions and feelings of reward. By visualizing positive outcomes, such as feeling proud of yourself for refraining from shoplifting, the brain releases dopamine, which reinforces the positive behavior and encourages you to repeat it.
Repeatedly engaging in mental rehearsal can gradually replace negative emotional patterns with positive ones. When you experience negative emotions such as guilt or shame as a result of shoplifting, these emotions create neural pathways in the brain that reinforce the negative behavior. However, by practicing mental rehearsal and visualizing positive outcomes, you can create new neural pathways that support positive behavior and emotions. Over time, these new pathways become stronger and the negative patterns are weakened and replaced by positive ones.
In chapter 11 of “Evolve Your Brain,” Dr. Joe Dispenza describes a study in which participants who engaged in mental rehearsal were able to strengthen neural connections between different areas of the brain involved in motor skills, leading to improved performance on a physical task. This suggests that mental rehearsal can have tangible effects on the brain and behavior, and can be an effective tool for breaking negative emotional patterns and cultivating positive ones. So, by regularly practicing mental rehearsal, you can train your brain to support positive behavior and emotions, and gradually replace negative patterns with positive ones.
Remember, overcoming addiction is a complex process and may require additional support and resources, such as therapy or a support group. By using these principles in conjunction with other strategies, you can gradually break free from the grip of addiction and live a more fulfilling life.