Why do you keep sabotaging your own success? Just when you're about to break a bad habit, it comes back even stronger. That’s not a coincidence. In this episode, I break down exactly why this happens and how to push through it so you can finally create the change you want in your life. The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll and Dr Steven Gundry. Here are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube
Full Episode
Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you want to get some inspirational texts directly to your phone. If you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305.
Today, we're going to be talking about why you self-sabotage, and then I'm going to teach you exactly how to stop. Now, I want you to think about this. Have you ever tried to break a bad habit, and you really want to break that bad habit? You're starting to break it, but just when you think that you're making progress, bam, it comes back even stronger than it ever has before.
You ever wonder why that is? Why when you get so close to breaking it and you're doing so good and you have so much momentum, you ever wonder why it's so hard and how it just comes back stronger? Why is it so easy to make change in the short term, but then you don't just come off the rails at the end.
You come off the rails, you crash, you burn, and then you give up on yourself and you give up on the change that you were trying to create. That's because there's this psychological phenomenon that's called the extinction burst, and that's exactly what's going on when you're trying to break a habit. The extinction burst is like a temper tantrum that your brain's conditioning is throwing.
And so your brain's conditioning creates an intense last-ditch effort to get what it wants before finally giving up and starting to change. And if you're serious about it, if you're serious about rewiring your mindset, breaking your toxic cycles, or stepping into a new version of yourself, then you have to understand exactly what this is, how it works, and then how to get past it.
And so if you look at the science behind it, this concept comes from something that's called the operant conditioning. It's a principle that was developed by B.F. Skinner. And so he found that when an expected reward is removed in some sort of way, all of the subjects initially increase the intensity of the behavior before the behavior dies out.
And so the classic study of the way they discovered this was with lab rats. And so Skinner placed lab rats in a box where they went over to a lever. If they pressed the lever, it would give them food. And after a while, they realized over days and days and weeks, if I go over to this, I just push the lever and it gives me food. And so the rats start eating and overeating.
They start getting fatter. And then he had it where once they push the lever, no food comes out. And once he stopped rewarding them, The rats, guess what? They didn't give up immediately. They pressed the lever more times. They pressed it faster, and they pressed it with more force before eventually giving up a couple days later and stopping. And so this pattern isn't just for lab rats, though.
It shows up in humans all the time whenever we're trying to break our own habits. Your brain operates exactly the same way when you are trying to break a habit. And so how does this show up in your life? How does this show up in your self-development? Well, let's say that you're working on yourself. You've decided you're going to ditch the self-doubt.
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