Soft addictions can be habits, obsessive behaviors, or recurring moods or negative thought patterns. They satisfy a exterior want but ignore the deeper need. They numb us to feelings and spiritual awareness by substituting a superficial high, or a sense of activity, for genuine feeling of accomplishment. Many soft addictions involve necessary behaviors like eating, reading, and sleeping. They become soft addictions when we overdo them and when they are used for more than their intended purpose. Soft addictions are captivating in their softness. E-mailing, shopping, and talking on the phone 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 understand how they will soon compromise the quality of our lives. You ought to know that an almost infinite variety exists. A soft addiction can be as idiosyncratic as any individual personality. While a universal soft addiction might be watching TV, a personal form could be sketching geometric figures or counting things for no reason. Some men and women have a difficult time telling the difference between an occasional behavior or fleeting mood from a soft addiction. Is watching TV for an hour a day a harmless habit, while if you watch three hours per day (the national average), does it become a soft addiction? As a general rule, keep the following in mind: The incentive and the function of your behavior decide whether it is a soft addiction or not. For example, television can become a window in which you can view new worlds, stimulating viewers with new ideas and leading them into meaningful pursuits -- or it could be a means of escape. There's a lady who's extremely selective in the things she watches, using television as a tool to learn about life in foreign cultures and to understand animal behavior. She employs television watching as a tool to gain knowledge. A different lady vegetates on the couch in front of the television every day. She leads a tough, hectic work life, and she mistakenly believes her viewing habits reduce her of stress. Seldom does she have a specific program she desires to watch or a real cause for watching it. When you contrast these 2 television watchers, the dissimilarities in motivation and function are easy to see. The first woman's motivation is to gain knowledge; the second 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. Do not allow soft addictions to take over your life.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Judith Wright
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