Real Struggle to Real Change
With easy habits, I could change just by making the necessary steps. They were easy. Logical. Do the thing, change the thing.
But the truly entrenched habits that were ruining my life and my relationships, the things that would sneak up on me when I was tired or having an off day, the things that would fuck up everything else in my life...those habits, I truly wanted to change, tried to change, and kept failing to change. Those things fucked me up.
So I had to dig deeper.
I read all the books. Got a Psychology degree. Took the courses. Yet nothing stuck for long. I needed to get to the core of the issues. Initially I could see some patterns. I got lots of insights. These felt good, but they weren't sufficient. What was needed, was to change them on a deeper, emotional level, where logic only came in afterwards.
Because that's what these habits were:
Deeply emotional and doing their best to protect me. When I could change them there, everything changed.