IF YOU manage to slow the whole process down enough, you’ll see that habits and compulsions are outer expressions of the deeper habit of not honouring oneself.

It goes like this: you know something’s not good for you. You know you shouldn’t do it. You don’t even want to, and so you decide not to. Then you break down and you do it anyway. What’s the conversation in your head that makes you give in? It’s the habitual one that says, ‘Oh nonsense, it’s not that important.’

When did you learn that habit? When you were a kid, and you wanted something your way; you wanted to not wear socks, or to write with a colour pencil, and you were made to do what you were told instead. At that moment, you didn’t learn that socks are good, or that lead pencils are better. You learned that your unique wants or needs – what that inner you calls for – is not important.

Now, when that same inner you calls for what it knows is good and right for itself, the learned you says, ‘Oh nonsense, it’s not that important.’ Give up the habit of not honouring yourself, and you’ll give up every bad habit in the book. Each time you do it, it gets easier, and each time you open a doorway to a new level of self-respect.