Addictions manifest in many ways. Some turn a fun hobby like shopping into a financial nightmare. Other times, addictions pose health risks, especially when the addiction is drug or alcohol related. It really does not matter what you are addicted to. The only thing that matters is that you realize that you have a problem and are ready to take the steps needed to take your life back. In this fight, your mind is your biggest ally. It has all the power you need to get back on a healthy track.
You need to get to the root of your problem. Your problem is not with any substance or activity. Your problem is with what drove you to seek refuge in an addiction. Maybe it is to fight boredom. Maybe it is to get a rush. Whatever it is, you need to figure out what drives you to put your life on hold for an addiction. When you have it singled out, find healthy alternatives to receive the feelings that you crave.
Notice what is going on around you when you get an urge to partake in you addiction. If you figure out your trigger, you can plan to avoid any situation that will make you weak. In the beginning of the fight with addiction, you will need to stay away from obvious stressors and triggers in your life. Eventually, you can work up the strength to stare down the habit and walk away clean.
I am addicted to Smoking
The next step in this basic method comes in week two. Make a note every time you want to indulge in your addiction, and also make a note of what’s going on around you at the time. For example:
Cigarette craving 1:00
Just ate lunch
Smoked 1 cigarette
By keeping track of what happens when you have a craving or a need to do something, you can find your triggers, and make yourself realize what causes the urge – and then find a way around it. If you always have a cigarette after lunch, try something new in your routine for at least three weeks. For example, instead of going to a café where smoking is allowed, eat lunch at a different restaurant. Don’t give yourself time to smoke after you finish eating, either. Go right back to work. We are creatures of habit, and addictions are all about breaking these habits. Did you know that you can form a new habit in as little as 27 days? Don’t use chemical dependency as an excuse. Once the withdrawal phase is over, your road blocks are purely in your mind.
Addictive Gambling
Your new daily routines and habits should reflect your new life. Do not stay in the same patterns that you did while you were in full throws of addiction. This trap sets you up to fall back in to repeated patterns, including the ones that drove you to addiction. Vary what you do day to day. This will keep you open to better and more healthy life choices.
As you face your addiction, remember this fight will be for your life. You need to stay strong and take back control of your life. You can and will do it if you put your mind to it.
Everyone’s told a lie– you, your friends, your boss, even your perfect “role model” mother. But the only reason you’ve ever told a lie was to help someone else, or yourself for that matter, out of a very sticky situation…right? Or are you just lying to yourself now? Either way, considering the fact that almost everyone on the face of the earth has lied at one point or another, we sure are lousy at picking out the most malicious liars among us. You might think you have a good sense of when someone is telling a tall tale, but you’ll find that when you know how to read the signs, spotting the falsities in your perpetually late co-worker’s excuses or even the faults in your spouse’s multiple cover-ups can really save you some strife in the long run. So, without further ado, here are 10 habits shared by Lying Larry’s and Fibbing Franny’s around the world.
1. Averted gaze: It’s not normal to expect someone to maintain full eye contact for the entirety of a conversation…unless they have some sort of disorder, and that’s another story in and of itself. However, if you notice any difference in the amount of eye contact the suspected liar is making, that could be a clue that they’re not telling the truth. In fact, even the direction of the gaze makes a difference when trying to figure out someone’s intentions. It has been noted that when trying to recall a fact, most people with avert their eyes upwards and to the right. A person who is trying to come up with a lie, however, will usually look down.
2. Too much eye contact: Just as a liar may avert his or her gaze to keep someone from looking into their eyes (it’s been long said that you can see the truth in someone’s eyes, therefore liars may try to avoid this result by looking away altogether), someone trying to cover up a lie may also make too much eye contact. This comes as a result of a reverse train of thought by the person in question. More experienced frauds may know that people are expecting them not to make eye contact and therefore counteract this by making prolonged eye contact, to the point of abnormality.
3. Stuttering: Telling a lie, especially a more in-depth one, takes a lot of effort on the fibber’s part. So much effort, in fact, that in the process of telling it, people tend to get tripped up. Think about it– if there’s something big at stake, it takes enough effort to remember and relay an actual string of events. Liars charge themselves with the duty of not only coming up with a fake string of events, but also coming up with it on the spot as well as double-checking every word they say seconds before they say it, meanwhile paying strict attention to every word they say for fear that they’ll be asked to repeat the same story later. Makes you almost feel sorry for them doesn’t it? Nah.
She tells nothing but lies
4. Sweating: It’s a natural nervous reaction. Most people sweat or get sticky palms when speaking in public, making an important decision, waiting on significant results, etc. But if someone is sweating during an everyday situation, that could be a tip-off that they fear getting caught in their lie.
5. Abnormal expressions: As in the case of liars making too much eye contact, they may also go too far when it comes to showing they are at ease to throw you off. If someone holds a facial expression for too long, such as a smile, or other expressions/gestures, take that into consideration.
6. Fidgeting: This may be a person’s way of diverting your attention, therefore breaking your concentration on the facts of the story they’re telling you. It may also be an uncontrollable nervous habit. Whether someone fidgets with an outside object or takes up a nervous habit such as tapping their feet or twirling their hair, these are all signs that your culprit may not be fully at ease and in the midst of spinning a tall tale.
7. Changes in pace: Beyond the obvious stuttering through sentences, more experienced liars might try to disguise this dead giveaway by pausing excessively. You can watch for this by noticing where in the sentence or story the person pauses. If it’s right before an important detail, or maybe before a detail they have relayed to you previously, this could be a sign that they are trying to straighten up their story in their head before it comes out of their mouth. Also, if the person pauses at irregular times such as the middle of a sentence (in the absence of a transition), they could be trying to let their voice catch up with their mind.
This girl can't keep a secret
8. Changes in tone of voice: When someone is spinning a story, they are usually concentrating too hard on coming up with the details for their body to focus on what it is normally able to focus on. This may cause a person’s voice to crack, which is almost a dead giveaway of a lie being told.
9. Any other changes in bodily functions: As noted above, people actively engaged in making up a story that isn’t true, while also trying to double-check the details of this story in their mind, while also trying to remember the details in case they have to recall them later…don’t usually have time for much else. As a result, functions such as blinking, swallowing and breathing may become abnormal. For the most part these changes will manifest themselves in the form of increased levels of all of the above (all going back to “fight or flight” reactions—also known as modern day nervous reactions).
10. Being overly vague: To lighten the load on themselves, fibbers will often not tell too many details of any story they’re asked to recall. And wouldn’t you do the same? Given the difficulty of telling a solid lie (noted several times thus far), it is much easier to keep it simple until further request. So give these people a run for their money—if they’re too simple, ask for further explanation, and then look for the signs noted above.
For the most part, pegging the aforementioned signs as a tip-off of a lie comes down to knowing the person in question. On any given day, any given person could show any of these signs, while also remaining perfectly innocent. But if you know someone’s normal tendencies, it becomes that much easier to peg these signals for what they really are, therefore catching their insincere act and taking proper actions. Ready to try it out but have no one to try it on? First, thank whatever higher power you might believe in…or your mom and dad for teaching you not to hang around liars. Then, go record the daytime court TV sensation of your choice and have at it.
Reading someone’s mind through telepathy has a long and legendary history. But if you want to have this ability too, you may have to rethink what mind reading is. If you envision closing your eyes and having someone from across a stage project their thoughts into yours, so that you can “hear what they’re thinking,” you are out of luck. People claim to be able to do this but they don’t teach their methods to anyone. However, mind reading is still open to you, and everyone, really, through a technique called Cold Reading.
Cold Reading is actually a set of techniques developed to give the appearance of reading someone’s mind. In fact what you’re reading are signals your subjects, i.e. the people whose minds you intend to read, are subconsciously giving you without their knowledge.
Sounds pretty cool, huh? It is. It’s great at parties and in business. For the most entertaining form of Cold Reading, watch Derren Brown’s show on British Television: the Illusionist. This highly popular show exhibits Derren Brown, a mind reader who explains and dissects his ability, reading people’s minds, hypnotizing them, and even controlling their actions. In one episode he walks through the streets of a bustling city asking people for their wallets, phones, and watches, and without so much as a moment’s hesitation, they all give them to him.
Cold Reading won’t give you abilities like Derren Brown’s, at least not at first. Here’s how to Cold Read: First, choose a subject carefully. The main ways to do this are to either to pick someone you know already, but who doesn’t know you; to ask for a volunteer from the audience, because presumably the volunteer will want you to be able to commune with the dead or do whatever you claim to be able to do; or to “shotgun the audience,” which means you make broad, general statements to a group of people such as “I’m sensing someone here has problems in their marriage.”
The next step is to profile your subject. This means you learn as much about your subject from their body language, dress, and reactions to you. Everything visible about a person can help you build a set of assumptions with which you can begin to predict specifics about that person’s personality and background. The next step is to go fishing for revelations about your subject’s life.
You may know next to nothing about the person in front of you, and you don’t need to—they will give you the secrets about themselves without realizing they are, if you ask questions about them in such a way that they appear to be statements. For example, if you they’re the person who has marital problems, you could say, “you’re marriage has been on your mind a lot lately, hasn’t it?” If you’re wrong about your statement, it doesn’t mean you’re not a psychic, because the statement was just a question.
telepathy
Most of the time, your subjects will supply more information than necessary from these question-statements. It’s from these confessions that you learn more about your subject. To do this well you have to be a great listener, to really open yourself to all the information the subject is releasing to you, from what they say to how they move their hands. Every bit of data is vital for the would-be psychic.
Another technique is to use Barnum statements, which are named after P.T. Barnum, cofounder of the famous circus by the same name. A Barnum statement is one that applies to nearly everyone, such as: “you have a big decision to make soon.”
From these techniques and others you’ll give your subjects the impression you’ve read their mind, when in fact you’ve just appeared to, using specific methods to pull out secrets the subjects themselves have supplied.
There are simple tricks to flex the hidden mind power you possess, and like a bodybuilder looking to add more muscle mass, the key to realizing mind control is through regular, simple exercises. Psychokinesis, often referred to as PK, is a term used to describe the ability of the brain to affect inanimate objects and otherwise control your surroundings, and there have been many famous users of this ability. Benefit from their knowledge by practicing these simple exercises every day, and over time you will realize your mind’s full potential.
Starting with the right mindset is the most important prerequisite to your psychokinetic work out. Arrogance, fatigue, anxiety, doubt, and overexcitement are all enemies of your success, and will hinder even your best efforts. If you are considering developing your psychic powers with malicious intent, such as for greed, revenge or a desire for attention and fame, your powers will not manifest themselves. Approach these exercises with a humble, sweet, and open heart, and be ready to practice every day: discipline, willpower and patience will show you the path to your mental abilities.
Many beginners start practicing mind power by learning how to feel the energy between their hands with a ball of
PSI BALL
psychic energy, also known as a “psi ball.”
Balance yourself by seeing yourself as the roots of a tree, reaching down into the solid earth. You are connected with the earth, bound to the soil, perfectly grounded.
Understand that there is energy flowing through you at all times; this is called “psi,” and you must feel and recognize the flow of it throughout your body. A psi ball is created by moving this energy. Usually, people describe a psi ball as being about the size of a baseball, or maybe slightly larger, although some are large enough to act as a shield, fitting around the entire body.
Gather this energy, and when there feels like enough energy, hold your hands out, keeping them steady. Make sure that whatever way you extend your hands (or hand), it feels natural and right.
See the hole in your hand. A small door has been unbolted and the psi, or energy, is trickling out. Can you feel the psi yet? Is it a slight tingling sensation, or more like a sense of pressure or emanating heat? When you think you can feel the psi, try to move your hands close together. If there is a resistance sensation, however slight, you know it’s there.
Play with the psi flow. Now you can use visualization to make the available psi into a ball, a cube, a pyramid: only your imagination restricts you.
If you were just practicing, simply release the ball.
After you have gotten the hang of your psi ball, you can try programming the psi ball to get a friend’s attention.
With very clear mental intent, send the ball to “poke” someone and give them a message. Go ahead and say the words in your head; this will help solidify your intentions.
Another invaluable tool which will help you to refine your PK powers is the psi wheel. The observable nature of your power through the psi wheel will be extremely satisfying. Try this when you have mastered your psi ball. You will need a small bit of paper or foil, an eraser, and a needle.
Cut a piece of foil or paper down to the size of a Post-It. Fold it diagonally and press down on the fold to create a crease. Unfold.
Create another diagonal fold on the opposite corner. Crease. There should now be a crease in the shape of an “X”.
Now fold the square lengthwise and widthwise, creating a cross through the center.
Pinch the “X” shape, allowing the center to pop up. The paper should look somewhat like a three dimensional, four pointed star. You’ve created a psi wheel!
Pressed the pointed end of your needle into the eraser. It should stand up perfectly straight.
Set your wheel on the center of exposed end of the needle. You are ready to use the psi wheel!
Place your on the side of the wheel, without touching it, and concentrate. Your palm should be facing the psi wheel. It will rotate when you’ve gathered sufficient psi.
Here’s another basic skill building technique which uses a candle flame:
Light a candle, any type will do.
You will now attempt to fuse your energy together with the candle’s energy field. Relax your mind and focus on the flame; visualize yourself becoming one with the flame; you are the flame. This is called “pacing.”
“Lead” the candle flame. Picture the flame growing longer, then receding, waning to the side as if being blown, then bending to the other side.
When you’ve had success, visualize your separation from the candle.
Next, try working with a pendulum. There’s no need to purchase a special pendulum; you can create one by simply attaching a ring to a string or thread. The exercise works best if the pendulum is attached to a stand and is hanging in front of you, rather than held in your hand.
Pace the pendulum; remember, to pace is to focus until you merge with the object or material.
Lead the pendulum; remember, to lead is to use your fused energy to move the object through mental projection. Imagine the pendulum moving back and forth, side to side, and spinning.
When you’ve been successful, emerge from the pendulum and return to your normal state.
When you have mastered the flame, the pendulum, the psi ball and psi wheel, you are ready to attempt to manipulate small objects.
Place a lightweight, small object on a flat surface.
This will sound familiar, because it is. Relax, and begin to pace the object. Your mental powers should now be strong enough, through practice with other objects, to do this effectively.
Imagine that a tunnel extends between you and the small item. Only allow your awareness to acknowledge the tunnel and the item at the end of it.
Visualize hands reaching out from your mind and dragging the item through the tunnel. You should “feel” the pull.
When you are experiencing the pulling sensation, it might help to make an “nnnnn” sound with your mind.
