Hard Habits
Soft addictions can be habits, compulsive behaviors, or chronic moods or thought patterns. They gratify a exterior want but ignore or block the deeper need. They numb us to feelings by substituting a superficial high for genuine feelings of accomplishment.
A great deal of soft addictions concern basic activities like eating, reading, and sleeping. They become soft addictions when we go overboard with them and start using them for more than their intended purpose. Soft addictions, unlike hard ones such as drugs and alcohol, are charming in their softness. E-mailing, shopping, and talking on the phone all seem like completely harmless, enjoyable activities while we're engaged in them. If we open our eyes to see how much time and energy we dedicate to them, however, we can see how they lower the quality of our lives.
You need to remember that there are an infinite assortment of soft addictions. A soft addiction can be as idiosyncratic as any individual personality. Though a universal soft addiction may be television watching, a personal form might be doodling geometric figures or counting items for no reason.
A few men and women have a hard time distinguishing an occasional behavior or fleeting mood from a soft addiction. Is watching TV for an hour a day a harmless habit, while if you watching it for three hours per day (the national average), is it a soft addiction?
As a general rule, keep the following in mind: The incentive and the function of your behavior decide whether or not it's a soft addiction. For example, TV can be used as a window to view new worlds -- or it could be used to escape this world. There's a lady who's extremely selective in the things she watches. She uses TV as a tool to gain knowledge about foreign cultures and to better understand the behavior of animals. Another lady vegetates in front of the TV daily, channel surfing and letting the programs wash over her. She leads a tough, hectic work life, and she mistakenly thinks that watching TV all night will reduce her of stress. Seldom does she have a specific show she desires to watch or a real cause for watching it. When you contrast the 2 TV watchers, the dissimilarities in motivation and function are clear. The 1st woman's motivation is to learn; the 2nd woman's motivation is to turn her brain off. The first woman uses television to enhance her life; the second woman uses it to escape from her life.
Don't allow soft addictions to control your life.
About the Author
JUDITH WRIGHT is hailed as a world-class coach, inspirational speaker, best-selling author, and corporate consultant. She is cofounder of the Wright Institute for Lifelong Learning. See her press release her book, "One Decision".
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