When I ask the question “Do you think you are addicted to your emotions?” I usually get a very stressed and uncertain response. “I’m not sure, is that possible?

The answer is YES, and it is surprising how many of us are addicted to our default emotions and don’t even realize it.

Just to clarify, it’s not actually the emotion itself but the chemical release that comes with the emotion. Each emotion has a chemical reaction, and our brains respond by giving us the feeling of relief or a reward.  So, the more we experience that “chemical hit” the more we need or crave it just to get ourselves back to what feels “normal.”

It’s not that different from an addiction to sugar, alcohol, or drugs only this shows up in the form of anger, anxiety, sadness, victim thinking, blaming, guilt, shame, etc. Don’t’ get me wrong, all these emotions may be valid, and I am a huge believer in feeling your emotions and working...

Clients often lament, “Do I have to do this again? I thought I already conquered that habit (or thought or behavior)."

And they absolutely have in remarkable and very visible ways. They have achieved success and done things that they once couldn’t imagine. And yet sometimes those sneaky little patterns come back to remind us of what we used to do. It's almost like a test.

Has that ever happened to you?

Well,  I truly believe that while we can slip backwards in our behavior, we never go backwards in consciousness. The fact is now we know what’s happening and can reverse course much faster.

Repetition is truly the key to success.

In fact, behavior changes happen because of repetition through something called “experience-dependent neuroplasticity”. In English, that means our brains change in response to our thoughts, actions, and experiences.

Every time you think a thought, a pathway of neurons lights up in your brain. If it’s...

In 2015, the engineer and “Smarter Every Day” founder Destin Sandlin discovered something surprising: he could no longer ride a bike. 

He’d grown up bicycling; he hadn’t had any injuries. Physically, he was capable of it. He just couldn’t ride it…because he’d accidentally “unlearned” how.

Destin had spent the year learning to ride something he called a “backwards bicycle” – a bike that had been re-engineered so that when you turn the handlebars to the right, the bike goes left. When he first started, he could ride his normal bike fine, and this bike was impossible. Physically, it’s not any more difficult than riding a regular bike.

Mentally, though? That’s a whole different matter. Basically, to ride the backwards bike, your brain has to rewire itself to understand that the handlebars work in the opposite way that you expect. Everyone who has tried it, many of whom are confidence that they can...