By Dina Aldabbagh

Why do we do things we know are not good for us? This is the million dollar question, isn’t it? You know it’s not good to smoke as much weed as you do, yet you keep walking into that dispensary. Your dad knows it’s not good to eat as much processed food as he does, yet the Dairy Queen worker wished him a happy wedding anniversary last month. Your mom knows it’s not good to go to bed as late as she does, yet every time her body hits the sheets, her finger hits Facebook reels. 

We know. We know that these things aren’t in our highest benefit, and yet we keep to them. You know that you’re paying way too much money for weed every month and that you can’t go a day without it and not feel anxiety. Your dad knows he’s gained 20 lbs. And your mom knows that she’s crashing every day at 4 pm because she hasn’t gotten more than 5 hours of sleep in months. We know. We all know the areas that are clearly hurting us and we would benefit from stopping. And yet we continue anyways. Why? Because we believe they are in our highest benefit.

How does that work? How can we know something so fully and yet have a belief that overrides what is really an obvious truth? Deep down, in some part of your subconscious, there is something in you that believes it is benefiting you more to keep doing that thing — that’s what you need to get clear on if you actually want to stop. You can willpower your way through it, sure — but the echoes of a belief will keep coming back up until you can change it. 

For this reason, an action-first approach is a very strong way to change beliefs. When you can just willpower your way through the beginning of change, and then see the results of that new behavior, that evidence will serve to change the actual belief you had before. For example, let’s say you were casually drinking alcohol five times a week and then brought that down to two. As a result, you lost 10 lbs, started thinking clearer, and stopped feeling that queasiness in your body, then those effects may be enough to show you that it is more beneficial for you to drink less alcohol. And in turn, you may just lose your desire to drink so much. You’ll prefer the feeling state you’re in without it, so to continue to engage with it just won’t make sense. As your belief changes, so do your modalities of satisfying your needs. 

However, if the belief that calls you to do an action is so deeply rooted, sometimes it’s not enough to change an action and have your beliefs naturally change with it. Sometimes, you have to act and mentally process in tandem. This looks like taking action while also reflecting, and being very present with yourself — focusing on how you’re thinking and feeling in relation to this thing. 

You may think to yourself, “There’s no way I believe this is benefiting me. I fully see how it only hurts me,” but you’re just not aware of the reason. 100% of the time, we do what we believe benefits us most. Every single thing we do, and have ever done, we believe will be to our net benefit. Even if it hurts us, we believe it gives us a net positive — because perhaps doing “this bad thing” prevents a worse thing from happening. 

Even the things we do for others — they’re never completely for someone else. The question comes up, “Is there any truly selfless act?” but even in doing a “selfless” act, you believe that it benefits you in some way. It may have the purest intentions, and in your heart, you’re doing it for this other person, but know that you still see yourself getting some benefit from it. Even if all that means is it makes you feel good, or affirms to you that you’re a good person who does kind things for others. It may simply make you feel good to give to a homeless person — and that’s why you do it — but realize that you still get something from that action: feeling good. On some level, you get emotional fulfillment. 

Once you can understand this truth, you can look at your behaviors honestly and without judgment, and ask yourself, “How would I have to believe this benefits me in order to keep doing it?” What is it doing for you?

Withhold the urge to shame yourself. Getting an honest answer to this question is the only way you can change it. You’ll notice, as you get more and more honest with yourself, how innocent and elementary these answers are. Not evil or scary. They’re things like, “I’m afraid I’ll feel pain,” “I want attention,” “I want someone to affirm to me that I’m not bad,” or “I want them to validate me.” As the human beings that we are, we’re just looking for some core needs to be met here. Our actions aren’t as layered as they seem; they’re quite simple. They can almost all be boiled down to one core desire or need we’re trying to get fulfilled. 

Then once you can figure out what you’re really seeking from this thing, you can recognize the ways in which other things can give you that without simultaneously costing you so much. You can recalibrate your actions to successfully satisfy this need of yours, rather than continuing to engage in this thing that is hurting you without ever giving you the satisfaction you seek. 

That’s kind of the key — you never really get the satisfaction from that harmful behavior that you’re seeking, right? You can keep smoking, keep eating, keep scrolling until you’re grey and in the grave, and still that need would’ve gone unmet. All that thing ever does is scratch an itch, it doesn’t heal the rash. And because you just keep trying to get rid of the sensation with the incessant scratching, your arm is all red and you’re close to drawing blood. The rash doesn’t go away with scratching, it gets irritated by it. This action may give you some good feelings or momentarily keep away the bad ones, but you always go back to your baseline — ultimately needing more of this “vice” to keep you afloat. The solution is not a pain med, it’s creating a new baseline. 

Your overeating will never bring you the safety you’re actually seeking. Your weed smoking will never actually provide you the true relief to your anxiety. Your scrolling will never give you back the time and dopamine you feel you missed out on from your day. These are all momentary solutions to hopefully carry you to that next level where you can actually meet the need. 

They all have their purpose. Your body is not working against you. It is a very smart vessel that’s using what modality it has available to get its need met. You are not “bad” for engaging in these “bad” behaviors. You are seeking something, and you just need to figure out what that really is and how this behavior — in some way — helps you in that. 

May this help ease you: you are not just some self-destructive person who logically wants to be better but for some reason cannot. No. You do have your best interests at heart; the belief you have about how that is achieved may just be misguided. This means that you’re not broken. You are acting in your best interest — as far as you believe. Your body and your subconscious are extremely smart and they are looking out for you to the best of their ability. It’s just time you step in and show them the correct way to love you. But you were never some self hating person, you just learned the wrong way to love yourself — so that it resulted in a way that resembled hate more than love. 

Why does a young boy ask out girls he doesn’t really like and not the one he actually does? Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t currently have sufficient confidence in himself. His ego can literally not take that kind of hit and instead, he needs to gather evidence from the world that he is desirable and that he won’t crumble in the face of rejection. So before he tries with that person — who if they say no, will crush him — he needs to be shown by the world that he is in fact a human being who other people want to date, even if that means dating girls he doesn’t even really like. This, yes even this, is for his benefit. 

You see, he’s not just someone who goes for people below his standard because he doesn’t believe he deserves better. In his mind, he may know that he is actually deserving of the girl he wants, but that’s too big of a risk for him at this point in time. He doesn’t feel safe enough to act to that degree yet — because to fall from that height would lead to a kind of hurt he’s not strong enough to handle yet. Rather, he’s someone whose very smart nervous system is teaching him that it is safe to make a move. To approach who he doesn’t really care to be rejected by helps him grow in his ability to make advancements towards girls. Then if someone — who he doesn’t really like — rejects him, it doesn’t actually matter to him. He can take that small hit to his ego and move on, trying again with someone new. His nervous system can live to fight another day and gather more evidence. 

Would the most beneficial thing be to simply make the move on the girl he really likes? Maybe. If he can handle the potential fallout if he gets rejected, then absolutely yes. Why not try for the exact person he wants? If she says yes, then how incredible is it that he gets to go out with a person he actually feels a connection with? He also wouldn’t miss out on his chance with her by waiting and not acting. And imagine how great that would be for his ego. To go for exactly the person he wants and experience mutual desire? Even if it didn’t work out, he’d have that as evidence for the rest of his life that it’s safe to take risks and go for who or what he wants, and that his life satisfaction will be increased tenfold as compared to investing in what he only kind of likes. The payoff would be huge for a huge risk like that.

The consequences could be huge too. With that kind of vulnerability, a lot could happen. She could reject him. All his friends could find out and make fun of him. He could start believing the story that he is factually undesirable. Or that it’s not safe to be vulnerable. It’s not safe to desire. He could allow this rejection to mean that women are horrible and that they should…blah blah blah. This could all happen. So his nervous system instead tells him, “Hey, we’re not ready for that. Once you believe about yourself that you are desirable enough, that it is safe to openly show your desire for someone else, and that rejection isn’t fatal, then we can try with who we really want. For now, let’s stay where it’s safe.”

So this boy, without even knowing it, is acting in a very self-preserving way that will foster his growth. The hope is that eventually, this young boy gains enough confidence and can go out into the world with boldness, vulnerability, and honesty in his desires. Obviously, it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the nervous system’s goal as it balances his safety and his desire for growth. It wants an incremental growth in his capacity, rather than to try to enter the deep end without knowledge of how to properly swim yet. 

It’s a part of this boy’s process to slowly gain confidence, but what if the actions never progress? This is when we can get stuck in a loop of doing a behavior as a form of escapism or coping. We get the urge to fulfill a need. We feel unequipped. We engage in what we know can at least scratch the itch, because that’s what we feel ready for. We feel bad about ourselves. The urge is quieted for now. The urge comes back up again. And so the cycle continues.

We need to learn the correct way to satisfy a need. Gratification is momentary — it’s just scratching an already irritated rash. When those things come up where you feel so unequipped to act in a way that actually provides satisfaction — so that you don’t have to engage in whatever destructive behavior — that’s when you need to go in. Be honest with yourself about what this action really gives you. It may be a lot deeper than you think, but keep mining for the gold until you find it. Because once you get to that root, and make sense of it, you are utterly freed. It’s like a release of pressure, because it wholly doesn’t make sense to you anymore to engage in something that you understand the full mechanics of. 

“Oh, I’m using food to ground myself when all I really need is to act in the way that honors my body’s sensations right now? Okay. Then let me just do that.” You stop trying to answer a “who” question with a place, or a “color” question with a shape. You start giving the response that actually answers the plea from your body. 

This is the law to figuring any of this out: all you need to do is make sense of it. 

As a child, your nervous system once had to learn how to respond to things it wasn’t yet ready for — and it may have stalled out there. So the thing that feels so true for you, may actually make no sense, but it’s been practiced in your body so many times that you believe it is the unquestionable order of your life. You just eat like this. You just respond to people in this way. You just need to release steam like that. Just just just. It’s just how you are. There’s no changing it — you’ve just always been like that. 

Here’s the key, your nervous system’s first responses to life are not just who you are — they are just your first ways you learned how to cope. You are more equipped now. You can recalibrate. Don’t get stuck in a life you hate because you believe there’s no changing you. That you came out of your mother’s womb and you were always meant to be a nightowl, the kind of person who yells when someone inconveniences them, a smoker…You are who you feel called to be. You weren’t born with automatic, predestined weaknesses; you just learned coping mechanisms along the way that were solidified into considerable fact. But they’re not fact. They’re just what your nervous system learned to use when it was less equipped. Conscious mind you can now decide what’s the best way to take care of you.

You’re more equipped now. Try again.