Is there a way to force change yourself?

Some movie makes it easy, Jim Carrey 'yes man' case in point. I'm tired of reading same cliches from self help book which didn't work.

I'm not talking about stop smoking, but I will use that as an example. Let say I'm avid smoker, and I'm willing to stop, but my body and brain won't let me to. I have the gut to flick the stop switch, but my body doesn't have it, and doing everything else just won't work.

The problem I having is different of course, I just that I cannot change myself no matter how much I want to. It's like a computer with strong malware that already changed the bios, the os, and eveything else. if you try to format, the os and bios will trick you into thinking that it is working, but actually it didn't. and even if you re-install the os, the bios will detect that you re-install the os and secretly take hidden image from the hd and inject into the new OS to allow the malware to work again. In other word, my body is like a PC that need the BIOS to be resetted, re-uploaded, with the HD need to be taken out, really format is, and have a clean OS install, with the back-up data need to be finely tune to make sure that the malware won't be introduced again (har har har - remember the USB virus that copy as hidden your word file and copy itself with that filename, abc.doc.exe and have ms word icon? darn it! i still remember the day norton av cannot detect it - gah).

Anyway, I remember talking to my doctor about giving me 'electrical shock treatment'(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy) and he was like, "we don't do that anymore" while smiling.


So, I have borrowed from the library a lot of self help book, read a lot of self improveing sites, but there is a part of me that I cannot change.

Does any of you people have tips, books, and / or websites that literally change yourself? 43folder, gethingdone, iwillteachyoutobereach, simpledollar, and the popular one (that those site linked) I already went through those.

Is there any obscore one that really work that I haven't been to yet?

It sounds like you want some quick answer. It can take a long time to make any significant change (though I can't comment much because you didn't say what you want to change). You took a long time to become who you are, and it will take a long time for you to become someone else.

It might help you if you see a therapist or at the least make a little support network of friends to help you make the change you're looking for. It's hard work and it takes more willpower than most people have, so having others help you makes it a little easier.

Changing your environment is a very solid way to help motivate change; if you are always in the same places with the same stimuli around you, you should expect to do things you have grown accustomed to doing.

You can rearrange your bedroom/apartment, or even move (if you want to get extreme). Simply moving furniture and pictures around, as well as spending time at new places can really help.

If we are talking about a chemical addiction, you may want to consider professional assistance as that can be *very* hard to break. Even if you have the sheer willpower to do it, cutting cold can really hurt you, and weening off unassisted will be extremely hard. If we're not talking chemicals, move your stuff around a lot! ;) Once you've rearranged, make a new effort to change what you do. Here's hoping it helps.

What exactly is it you want to change? Different things require different strategies.

Starting a habit is much different from stopping one, for instance; changing a routine is fairly easy once you are in one, but building one from scratch can be highly difficult; and so on. As serratemplar mentioned true chemical addiction is a righteous bitch and beyond what anyone on the internet can help you with - you need real friends and professional help for that kind of thing.

Anyways, without knowing what you're trying to accomplish, the appropriate advice could range anywhere from "just do it" (or "just stop doing it") to "get a brain transplant and/or warp yourself into an alternate reality." All depends.

Once you give in, it's going to be hard to go back up. In the smoking example, say you have gone 3 days without smoking, then on the fourth day, you were like "ah fuck it, one doesn't hurt". then you have lost. BUT, it's okay to give in once in a while, as long as you keep going back up.

The way I see it, it's like the stock market. You go up, then down a little bit, then up, then down a little bit. Two steps forward, One step back.

What is it you want to change? I am sure the GDNet Lounge Psychologists will be glad to help you out ;)

Quote: Original post by HelplessFool
It sounds like you want some quick answer. It can take a long time to make any significant change (though I can't comment much because you didn't say what you want to change). You took a long time to become who you are, and it will take a long time for you to become someone else.

It might help you if you see a therapist or at the least make a little support network of friends to help you make the change you're looking for. It's hard work and it takes more willpower than most people have, so having others help you makes it a little easier.

What I'm afraid of right now is the 'lost a limb' mentality. It's like you're eating at a diner and a lorry that plan to park accidentally hit the gas and cashed into the diner, running over your legs.

a) do you need a doctor? yes - to stop the bleeding, to amputate, to heal.
b) will you grown your legs back? no. will your life change for the rest of your life? yes? will it return to normal? no.
c) was it your fault? no

What I'm afraid of right now is that I just can't revert back to normal how much I want. And it wasn't even my fault in the first place. Yes, I'm meeting with doctors and I'm taking medications. And i'm taking theraphy, but I'm afraid it didn't do much.

I once joked to my counsoller if she a master of NLP so that she could just re-program my brain. NLP stand for neuro linguistic programming.

Actually it's how my brain function and think. It's scary to feel like having two person inside a body (although not in split personality sense way, although, it times, it looked just like that).

It was more like the film dreamcatcher. you're inside yourself, there are times you can control it, but mostly it went through this master control alien, and it will decided what you can and cannot do, will and won't do. And at times, doing things that you will suffer from later.

What's the non-mental problem you're trying to solve?

Those "help yourself" shit are just another way to lie to yourself.

I actually changed myself: I discovered: there is no MYSELF. I mean, the image of myself for myself is just an like an image I have of everything else for myself: it can be right or wrong, but doesn't even really matter.

I discovered, that I was wrong about myself and my desires. And a lot of other things too. The most important thing (that started this) was discovering that my thinking, and the way humans think is imprecise at best, simply untrue at worst.
Why is it imprecise/untrue? The answer is fuckin simple: can you plan out things just using your head but nothing else? I doubt it: if you plan something (a program for example, or design a machine) you have to document it: write all ideas down, even make some diagrams sketches (or if you don't do that: the code itself is just like a document). Why is thinking about ourselves and life any different? Sometimes it's more complex, than programs/machines.

So that's basically it. I thought some thing over by writing them down and discovered: my theories are not so precise or good. Some of them are plain wrong. So I stopped thinking about life and myself: I don't have the mood for planning it out (especially if I can't even decide what I feel: no input data to work with), so I let it go. And the thing, that I could let this go helped me a lot. I don't distress myself any more (as I did since I was 5, so 20 years so far).
I don't know if this change is spectacular for others or not (since I1m not in the same environment any more), but I guess that there's some signs.
I'm unemployed for 8 months now. This, and some old problems (being singe, even a virgin, Simply put: I'm just a nerd) actually caused the deepest depression so far about 4 months ago. I was constantly thinking about killing myself. This forced me to give up my pride and ask for help on forums: I wrote down a lot of things about myself. When I read them and some harsh responses and very good, really relevant questions, I discovered the flaw in my thinking.
Now, I'm still in a generally bright mood (don't worry, not some rose-glassy flying-pony world), and I actually think about real problems. I could go out, give a shit, and meet people. Just because I didn't think about what the others think about me.

Another addition to the story: this whole thing wasn't just an accident: it actually started by going to a foreign country (Finland) with the hope, that some kind of self salvation will happen already (20 years of distress and no real hopes that anything will change).
And it wasn't a safety decision (I'm still unemployed), but I hoped that something happens. I was thinking some other way for it to happen, but happened anyway.


So long story short: get away. Change your environment. Relocate/whatever.


Anyways: what do you want to change and why? Are you sure that there's a problem with you? And not just want to evade some other more frightening but more real change in yourself/environment?

Just an example: a guy on a forum ("Solitude and Pain" it's Hungarian) wants to be a Buddhist. To give up his desires. In reality: he cannot give up his false image of himself: that he's ugly/inappropriate-for-life, and nobody wants him. That isn't true (healthy young guy, who is more handsome than me, girls emailed him, does sports etc). He was just too coward to make contacts with people. And unable to give up his own image of himself. He makes up everything to confirm/justify his cowardliness. (every women are bitches, only the rich/handsome/aggressive/muscular guys have girls, everybody tries to trick him, God makes his way like this, or "but..but I have bipolar-depression": I guess he's right about this one).

So: Yes, NO, I don't know...

Quote: Original post by FableFox

Quote: Original post by HelplessFool
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What I'm afraid of right now is that I just can't revert back to normal how much I want. And it wasn't even my fault in the first place. Yes, I'm meeting with doctors and I'm taking medications. And i'm taking theraphy, but I'm afraid it didn't do much.

If you give up on yourself, which it sounds like, no amount of anything is going to help correct what you don't like. None of these things alone can help you, they all require you to do some work yourself, and you don't sound like you have that attitude.

The "lost limb" mentality is just like the mentality of the guy I mentioned in my previous post. You have to give up the image of yourself, and stop coming up with excuses for that or something else you are afraid to do.

And to be honest, you won't get help here if you won't be more specific (which I guess you won't be).

BTW: ever heard of cognitive psychology?