 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, all praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. As-salatu wa s-salam ala as-sharaf al-anbiya wal-mursaleen, Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in. Allahumma al-limna ma yinfa'una wa anfa'ana bima al-lamtana wa zidna al-man. So, mohassaba. Is mohassaba a familiar term? Okay, so mohassaba is taking account of your actions, taking account of yourself. This is like in the 12-step program, taking a daily inventory of yourself. But mohassaba is a very important concept within the spiritual tradition in Islam, and just the idea of working on oneself. The virtues of mohassaba is indicated throughout the Qur'an over and over again, and the downfalls of not taking account of yourself is also brought up in the Qur'an. So, this idea of just having wishful thinking that everything is going well and not tracking progress against your goals in some sort of organized fashion. So, if you want your life to get better, it's not going to happen by chance. It's going to happen by change, by monitoring, looking inwards, and making active changes. Umar radi allahu anhu was a companion of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the notable companion of the Prophet. He said, he said, take account of yourself, do mohassaba of yourself before you're taking account of. So, this idea is absolutely within our tradition from the get, from the start. And what's interesting is there's a lot of data about simply monitoring your behavior and how that has an effect on your behavior, and it's very interesting. So, for decades, we've known just the simple act of monitoring your behavior, whether that be an addictive behavior or just a habit, just the fact of monitoring it is incredibly helpful in changing the behavior. So, there's a couple of ideas that come up in the scientific literature about this, well-established data over the last several decades talking about this. But I want to bring up some important points, interesting points. Number one, when monitoring your behavior, it's just the act of it. It's not about being precise about monitoring your behavior. The simple act of recording is more important than how precise you are or what method you use. So, it's not about being this really precise data-driven process. It's more so about just getting out and doing it and seeing what kind of effect it has. And they've done this on food intake. They've shown that just the act of recording your food intake has been shown to improve people's food behavior. Just the simple act of monitoring body weight has been shown to improve body weight and same thing with exercise levels. And then the point I want to drive across is that simply monitoring itself improves the behavior. It's not that you have to monitor it and then there's a separate process of, now what do I do with that data that I've collected and how do I improve it? There's no second step. Just the monitoring itself improves the behavior. So, when people, let's say people wanting to exercise more, just the simple act of recording their exercise habits resulted in them exercising more. And it also tended to increase the enjoyment of exercise as well. The other important point is that it's not about the goal, the goal behavior. So, for example, somebody that wants to increase their amount of steps, they want to increase their physical activity. It's not like I'm going to monitor this and as I'm getting closer to my goal, that's what's going to motivate me to continue to change my behavior. So, sometimes researchers didn't even give people a step counting goal. They just gave them a pedometer to track their steps and told them to start walking. And just the fact that they were able to monitor, see that number continue to increase, improve outcomes and improve that behavior and help them get to that target behavior. So, bottom line is the monitoring in itself is the goal and the monitoring in itself is success. So, success or failure isn't about changing the behavior. Success is just in the fact of monitoring it. So, when you monitor how many times you engage in an act, you want to look at the fact of monitoring a success and not be judgmental about if you've reached your goal, how fast you're reaching your goal, so on and so forth. So, you want to be non-judgmental and curious and just monitor your goal so that you don't miss out on that important act of monitoring because you've jumped ahead and are getting discouraged because you're not meeting your behavior goal. Okay, and the last thing I'll say before we jump into the text is one of the most irreplaceable things about monitoring your behavior is that you develop connections that are game changers. So, when you monitor the date and time of your behavior, you start to develop patterns like every day at this certain time, this behavior occurs. So, now you have this really important connection of what's going on around that time or what's going on around that date and there might be a simple fix that can help you resolve that behavior. You also want to monitor the location and if you can make connection between the location and your behavior, you might realize every time I come to this location or even come close to this location, this behavior occurs and then it's no longer this huge battle, it's really simple in regard to just avoiding that location. And then you also want to monitor the feelings. So, you might realize that every time you engage in a behavior, there's a feeling associated with it right before that behavior occurs. There's a feeling associated with it. And then you realize that it's perhaps less about pumping the brakes on the behavior and more about figuring out how to resolve that feeling prior to the behavior. So, once people start developing connections between that behavior and what's going on before it or around it, it's really a game changer for them. And then last session, we ended on page 103, so we'll pick up from there. So, it talks about a specific behavior. So, now it talks about something specific to monitor and that's craving. So, it talks about how... And by the way, it's not simply that we monitor our behavior when we're abstaining from our behavior. It can also be monitoring the behavior even if you're engaging in it. And that might be a great opportunity to see what connections are being set up. So, it's not necessarily... So, when you're engaging in the middle of engaging in an addictive behavior and you continue to engage in it, it's still a good time to monitor it. Similarly, if you stop for a period of time, every time that behavior comes back or that desire for that behavior to come back, it's a great idea to monitor that desire of craving and see what's associated with that. Why is that occurring and what can I manage in order to avoid that? So, it talks about on page 103, you're learning a lot about how the sequence from triggers to your addictive behavior unfolds. Now that you've come to understand that your triggers and thoughts lead to your addictive behavior, next we turn to the craving phase, which is the last experience in the sequence prior to making the decision to engage in that behavior. So, when you break the process down and become aware of the triggers, thoughts, and cravings, then the final outcome of it, which is the addictive behavior, when you become aware of that, it doesn't become automatic anymore. It becomes a decision that you can make with your rational brain. Noticing all the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that you experience during cravings is a central part of becoming a self-expert. Cravings are different for everyone. The first step to beating a craving is to take a look at each of the features of the craving. Each of these components, and understand how you experience it. So, okay, so going into how do you experience a craving, because this is the target behavior that we, this chapter suggests, monitoring in order to gain traction. So, it gives a good exercise on 5.3. It says, think about the last time you had an intense craving. So, the last time you actually had a craving to engage in your addictive behavior, Now, the first part of the exercise, try and think about what you were feeling in your body. What was the physical sensation? And it goes through a list of things that you can look at. Your neck, your back, your chest, your heart, your heart racing, so on and so forth. Then it goes through the next part of the exercise, which is now try and think about the emotions you experience during a craving. That can be anxiety, excitement, anticipation, restlessness, irritability, and others. And then it talks about, let's identify the thoughts that you experience. So, what are the thoughts that occur right before engaging in the behavior? And those can be, I need it, I have to have it. I can't handle getting sick or not feeling this way. I can't get it out of my head. Once you're able to understand the aspects of those cravings, then the next job on the next chapter is to set up a whole new set of skills of coping with those cravings. Right now, we're simply at a point where we want to just notice everything about them. Notice the components of them to get ready to intervene on them. And then it goes into on page 105, CBT self-monitoring skills. And it says, this is an interesting part. Learning to self-monitor can help you to understand the psychology behind your addiction and begin to control it throughout each day. And it says, most of us are not self-monitoring. Each day. And it says, most of us are not used to thinking about thinking. It can be a little challenging at first. So, sort of looking inwards or being aware of what's going on within us. It can be a little challenging at first, especially since our thoughts often go through our heads so rapidly that we don't notice them right away. But with practice, you can learn to become more self-aware. And once you do, you can start building a set of CBT skills that you can learn to change your thinking and your behavior patterns. Now we're going to go to exercise 5.4. If we can pull up the exercise, it'd be great. Exercise 5.4 provides with a craving monitoring form. When you use this form, you'll identify your triggers, your thoughts, your emotions, and the intensity of your cravings. This is a really, really important exercise. There's apps out there where you can practice this exercise. And there's different versions of this. But if you can, every time you have a craving or a desire to engage in your addictive behavior. So for a lot of people when they start at this, their addictive behavior, whether that be pornography, food, drugs, cannabis, opioids, a lot of them, when they get to the point where they want to stop, it can feel like this mystical force that happens out of the blue. They go through these periods where they don't think they'll ever engage in their addictive behavior again. They're just done with it. They can't even imagine doing it again after this consequence I just faced. They're so fed up with it. They're sick of it. And in their mind, there's this thought that how can I ever engage in this behavior again? I'm never going to engage in this behavior again. And then out of the blue, the behavior comes back and it overwhelms them. And some people will go through this process. It's almost like a delusion for years, the decades. But once we learn to monitor that craving that drives us to use and start making connections with the time it occurs, the place it occurs, and the way it occurs, then we're able to go to another level of this. We're able to really track our addiction and recognize it's not this mysterious force. It ends up once we go through the process of tracking it. Now it starts to become this predictive, reproducible force. You know, like you see a cobra, and they move so strange. It's like you get encountered with and automatically there's this natural sense of fear that occurs, because they move different than us. But when you start to observe their behavior, you realize they have limitations in their movement. And then you start to realize they only get agitated at certain times. And if you get into a certain distance from it, but then more importantly, you start to recognize that they have a tell before they strike. And so this thing that becomes this like overwhelming, confusing threat. When you start to really observe it and become aware of it. You start to learn how to be able to manage it and take care of it. And, and that's what's so important about this that's what this step is, and it can't be, you know, overemphasize how important it is to be able to make these connections. So, using this form, there's a couple parts of it. First, you identify the situation you were in. I'm sorry. The first column is first you write right down the date and time of day that you're craving occurred. Then you identify the situation you were in when you first, when you felt triggered. So what was the date and time, and then you identify the situation. For example, did you experience an internal trigger, such as feeling depressed or low, or was it after an argument, or an external trigger such as attending a place where other people were engaging the addictive behavior or you saw something that set off a chain of thinking. Next, you write down the thoughts that went through your mind when you were triggered. It's important because if you can break down the thoughts, then you can counteract those thoughts. Once you break down the thoughts you can counteract those thoughts. And also you identify the feelings that came up for you in conjunction with your thoughts. The feelings that came up in conjunction with your thoughts. Finally, you rate the intensity of your craving on a scale, on a scale from zero to 10 with zero being no cravings at all, five being an average and 10 being severe constant cravings. And you want to try to do this as much as you can. So if you can do this at all, even mentally, be aware of it, you'll go far. If you can write it down and complete it on a regular basis, then you can create a pattern and really start gaining traction on this. So you also want to try to fill it out in real time whenever you can. So that the details about your thoughts and the intensity of your cravings are as accurate as possible because the longer you wait, the more there can be mistakes. So by raising your awareness of your psychological experience as it relates to your behavior, you gain knowledge and self understanding that you need to be a self expert, and it really is a game changer at that point. And a lot of ways addiction is a sign of something. It's a symptom of something that's unbalanced within us. It's unbalanced within us. And it's also a symptom of something unbalanced in the family oftentimes. And it's also a symptom of something unbalanced in the community. And something unbalanced in society, when you have a society that's addicted. And when you're able to monitor what that is a symptom of. You can start an important process of healing. You can start a really important process of healing. So it goes into a wrap up to end the this section, it says congratulations you made it through an intense set of exercises and you are well on your way to changing your addictive behaviors. And if you have intimate knowledge of your triggers thoughts and cravings your well positioned to learn to respond to them differently to the cues that led you straight down a path to your addictive behaviors now you can choose to do something else as opposed to have it run on autopilot. So you have to use the self monitoring form regularly and compete all complete all of the exercises. Now the next chapter, you're going to develop a set of skills to cope with the triggers thoughts cravings without turning to the addictive behavior. So let's start in shallow with questions. You can check in.