Why can’t I change my behaviour?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): I am distracted, both mentally and physically. The world pulls me in different directions. I chase this and that. I chase respect. I chase accomplishments. I chase women and sex as well. All this is a problem because it interferes with my day-to-day comfort. The urge is so over-powering that it disrupts my daily patterns. How to deal with this?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You have a particular way of living and you want to talk about it. You have selectively picked up one aspect of your living for discussion because you want to get rid of it.

We do not see that it is impossible to change just one aspect of one’s behavior. There are many ways in which the pattern of our mind finds expression, a thousand ways. Of these thousand ways, a few pertain to academics, a few pertain to your job, and a few pertain to your beliefs about the world, religion, and politics. But of all these thousand ways in which the mind finds expression, you pick up only two or three for discussion. Which are these two or three ways? The ones that are the most conspicuous, right?

You do not talk of the other ways because they are either hidden, or pleasurable so far, or at least they don’t pose any problem of any kind. Even a moral dilemma is not…