Your brain moves toward whatever you focus on, not away from what you forbid. Tell yourself "don't eat cookies" and you crave them. A baseball player who kept saying "don't screw this up" kept screwing up. Set a destination instead.
Most people don't realize, James, I know you do, but most people don't realize that their brain works just like a Jeep. You type in the destination you want to arrive at and it'll start to take you there. I remember someone came to me one time and he said, I don't understand, you know, I'm, I want to lose weight, I'm totally fired up, and I tell myself all day long, just don't eat the cookies, just don't eat the cookies, right? And you know, your brain doesn't hear don't, it doesn't process negatives, and so what it hears is eat the cookies. Eat the cookies. When I would work with athletes, they would go to the bat like a baseball player. I remember one time he would go up to bat and he would just say, just don't screw this up, just don't screw this up. And then guess what he would do? He would screw it up, right?
