Our entire lives, we’ve always been taught to stay away from things like drugs because they are addictive. Their addiction is said to be due to the chemicals they contain, but how about things like gambling? Gambling does not contain chemicals. So, how can a behavior, rather than a chemical, be addictive?

But more important questions are: Why is it that certain people become addicted and other not? Why do people become more addicted at certain times of their lives than others? And once you’re an addict, are you always an addict, or can you change?

Basically, if you’ve ever wondered how addictions work and, more importantly, how to break them, then you’re in the right place. It all comes back to the way in which we learn to feel.

Whether it’s an induction to one of my online courses or a book - one of the first little pieces of awareness I like to direct people’s attention to, is the way in which our unconscious mind learns to feel. And that is through transference, which basically refers to the concept that feelings "rub off". The classic example marketers use are things like celebrity endorsements.

They take a known face that people already have existing feelings toward. When that celebrity endorses a brand with repetition, some of those feelings rub off onto the brain. And they rub off onto additional product lines and so forth. This is why, when a celebrity becomes embroiled in a sex scandal or some kind of controversy, all the advertisers pull their sponsorships. They don’t want negative feelings to transfer.

The lesson is this: Feelings "rub off". Certain feelings more so than others, but we are going to get to the bottom of this throughout the book.