Getting Rid of a Bad Habit

I used to think that how you got rid of a bad habit was that you just stopped.  Slam on the brakes.  Try to avoid the whiplash.  Then get out of the old car,  get a new car and drive a different direction. 

For the first half of my life that was the method I tried over and over.  It did NOT work.  Some other driver seemed to be driving my car.  I felt like a loser. The more I tried the method and it didn't work, the more I was sure I was a loser.  I found myself back in the old car like a night terror.  New Year's Resolutions, daily resolutions - nothing but failure.

Only in these new years have I finally found resources so I could learn about how to get rid of a bad habit.  It's not that I didn't dig but what I found didn't work. What I turned up was, do something for 21 days and you will have formed a habit.  I couldn't do something for 21 days.  One to three was my pattern.  Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it when you do the bad habit.  I couldn't remember to do it. 



Here are the basics:

1)  I had to have a good habit to replace the bad one. 

2)  The good habit had to be one I truly wanted - not just something I thought I "should" want.

3)  I had to start ridiculously small.

4)  I had to have lots of support from the people around me.

5)  I had to make sure I understood what the bad habit was doing for me.  I believe everything we do has purpose, but often the purpose is unconscious.  For example, when I stopped smoking I learned that part of the reason I smoked was because I felt sophisticated and I saw non-smokers as kind of boring.  That had to change.

6)  The new habit needed to be in place every single day.

7)  I needed to reward myself for the progress I made and stay off my case when I had a slip. 

8)  I learned to start over and never, ever, ever, give up.

Habits that Enhance Our Lives

I just finished reading "The Power of Habits" by Charles Duhigg.  It's been a best seller and I can see why.  The author has included a lot of fascinating information about how habits influence both individual lives, social movements and companies.  It's a very interesting read.

On the down side, I thought some of the examples were off base and somewhat forced when it came to organizations.  I am familiar with some of the examples and just didn't see what they read into it.

However, there are some really useful ideas about habits in the book.  My experience definitely agrees with what they say about how habits affect our lives.  The percentage they used was 40% of the time we are operating out of habit.  I would have said more than 50% of the time but whatever.  Since we are on automatic pilot when we're acting out of habit, those habits had better be good ones or our lives will not be what we would wish them to be.

The difficulty comes when we try to change our habits.  According to the author, our brains actually change when we form a habit and the change is there forever.  In order to change a habit, an overlay has to form to obscure the old habit and form the new one.

To form a new habit, it must be attached to a habit we already have and want to keep.  For example, if we want to form the habit of exercising, the first thing is to determine when we want to do it.  Right after our first two cups of coffee, for example.  The coffee is firmly in place and exercising immediately after anchors the new habit in time.  That's called a "cue."  Without a cue to start a new habit, it's not going to happen.

Then by repetition a routine develops.  The more it's repeated, the more ingrained it becomes.  Then the new habit shows up in the brain as strongly as the old habit.  Of course, if the routine stops, the old habit comes to the surface and fills in the space where the new one was.

There has to be a reward for the new habit to stay in place.  It's not good enough that we "should" do the new habit.  That doesn't work with our brain chemistry.  For example, with exercise, it takes awhile for us to reap the rewards of being stronger and healthier.  So, we'll need to find a way to reward ourselves for carrying out the habit if we want to stay motivated.

I wonder why more attention isn't paid to the skill of developing habits since so much of our quality of life is bound up in our habits.  I know for myself I've often had really good intentions but forgot to carry them out.  I put myself down and felt ashamed but I really didn't know what to do about it.  This new information is a huge help.

The Upside and the Downside of Habits

My habits have always seemed to be barriers to my heart's desires.  Eventually, I realized that it would be a good idea to actually research what's known about habits so I've been in that process for awhile now.  I have learned a lot, and the more I learn, the more I find I need and want to learn.

Here's what I think, so far, about "bad" habits: 

• I don't believe bad habits happen because I'm a bad person.  I believe they serve a purpose.  They developed because, unconsciously, I thought they were helpful.  Overeating is an example.  Eating pleasurable foods is a great antidote to emotional pain.  I unconsciously used it as a tool.  A better way would be to notice when I have emotional pain and learn how to comfort myself in ways that don't have such negative consequences.

Here's what I think, so far, about "good" habits:

• I believe that forming "good" habits is a lot harder than we believe.  I was taught that you just start doing what you should be doing anyway and not make any kind of a fuss about it.  Well, so far in my life I haven't met anybody who has done that.  Learning to form new habits is an art and requires study and support from others.  The formation of habits, new research indicates, has evolved as a survival tool.  For example, we can't possibly think about everything necessary to drive a car.  The process of learning is to a large extent dependent on putting the actions necessary into unconscious mind. 

At this stage of my life, one of the most important tasks I've taken on is to discover how to build a life that I enjoy and that has meaning for me.  Building that life is simply building a series of new habits.  Simple.  Not easy at all.

Mindlessness

Several years ago I took a seminar on "mindfulness," and they told the students that most of us go through life like robots, operating mainly unconsciously. We often give almost no thought to how we feel, what we're thinking, what we're doing, why we're doing what we're doing, what's going on around us - mindlessness.

My mind was usually worrying about what I "needed" to do next and what terrible things were going to happen if I didn't, my personal shortcomings, what somebody else was doing or not doing.  I was either living in the future or the past.  It would have been extremely unusual for me to actually notice my body, my feelings, or my environment. 

When I heard that mindfulness was preferable to "mindlessness," I wasn't sure why it was.  I really thought it was just how human beings were and there was really no choice in it so why does it matter anyway.  The answer to "Why does it matter, anyway?" was that when I lived in my head, thinking about the past or the future, I was totally missing the present - which is where my life is actually lived.  It would be possible for me to go to my grave without ever having really participated in the life I have been mysteriously given!  It's also possible, however, to make a choice to live in the here and now and actually experience my life.

I realized I didn't want my life to have been about housework and whether I was pretty enough and whether I had enough money, and whether the people in my life were doing what I wanted.  Those were the things that revolved in my mind every day and were, therefore, my life as I was living it.  Yuck!

They mentioned that the choice to live mindfully was one that had to be made - not just daily but moment by moment.  It's a very difficult discipline.  However, I can testify that as I continue to make that choice in my life, I continue to be more and more in touch with my heart and the love in the universe.  What else could be more important? 

Nothing Changes Unless There's a Plan

Ah, insight!  It's so exciting!  It promises a new life and new happiness! 

But here's the thing - it's temporary.  Usually.  There are a few exceptions but mostly it's temporary. 

For example, I just finished reading Cheryl Richardson's book, The Art of Extreme Self Care.  She's divided the book into twelve months with tasks to do each month.  She's actually presented me with a plan for improving my self care.  However, it's up to me to decide what I will do to improve my self care on a daily basis and then remember to actually do it.

As a life coach, I've learned that I'm not the only one who has trouble making a plan and then remembering to carry it out.  The call of my unconscious routines seduces me.  So, I post sticky notes everywhere to remind me to floss, to call friends, etc.  I set the alarm on my phone to remember to do evening meditation. 

For me, planning is not a complicated process.  I've read many, many books on the subject of planning and some of them are long and detailed.  I got lost and gave up.  So now I just brainstorm a list of possibilities and choose what seem to be the best ones.  (Brainstorming just means spitting out all the stuff that comes to mind without judging.)  Then I put the best of the possibilities on my to do list every day.

I deeply believe that simplicity works best for me and for a lot of other people too.  I also deeply believed, even before reading Cheryl's book, that taking care of myself is my first responsibility and if I do a bad job of that, nothing else is going to go well.

Making Room for my REAL Life

Clutter exists in time as well as space.  No one ever told me that.  I had to figure it out for myself.  There are innumerable time-wasters that can clutter up my life.  With the advance of the internet and electronic devices, we have many more time clutter problems than before.

I thought the way to get rid of time clutter was to figure out what to eliminate, but even though that sounds logical, it's actually backwards.  It doesn't work the way eliminating material clutter does. 

With material clutter I can just make a pile of stuff I want to simplify, and then divide it into: 1. a pile of trash  2.  things to give away or sell and 3.  things to put away.  With time clutter I just use what I've learned about what moves my heart and put those things into a time slot.  Of course, that means heart activities will crowd something out, but once I know what the heart activities are, I find it really easy to see which time clutter things need to go. 

It works just fine for me to check email and Facebook only once a day and use that time to write posts for my two blogs.  I've completely given up ironing.  I still have a little ironing board but I just use it to iron labels on my daughter's clothes and to let company iron their stuff.  It's a lot easier to do dishes as I go along rather than making a big production of it once a day.

When I'm living from the heart, writing, taking pictures, spending time with people I love, cooking new dishes and just enjoying my peaceful life easily crowds out stuff that really doesn't matter in the long run.

Creating a Beautiful Life by Using Intention

I believe that many of us just get up every morning and do what's in front of us to do - chores, work, sleep, eat, dress, errands and on and on.  Every once in awhile we might have a minute where we think about what our life is about, but it's probably unlikely that we think of ourselves as the a creator of a work of art, but that is what we are whether we realize it or not.

We are either creating our lives consciously or unconsciously.  In order to create a beautiful life, we are probably going to have to become conscious of what we're doing.  That sounds so simple!  In my experience it is simple, but also one of the most difficult things I've done.

Let's say that we've already done the work of discovering what a beautiful life looks like to us.   (This work is of the right brain and definitely not the left brain.)  Then what happens is that we forget about it in a day or two and then go back to our normal, unconscious way of doing things.

So how can we make sure we remember that our lives are a marvelous gift from our creator that we can make beautiful every single day?  When I take a step back from my daily rounds and think about the gift I've been given, I know that if I were my creator, I would be sad that the life I gave is being used as an unconscious round of chores.  Maybe it's as simple as writing down and memorizing an intention every morning. 

If I set the intention every morning that I am creating a beautiful life today and honoring the fabulous gift I've been given, my to-do list miraculously changes.  Ideas often come to me about how I can make that day a beautiful day.  Other ideas about actions I could take to lay groundwork for even more beautiful days in the future.

Intention has great power.  It gives me the opportunity to tune in to my creativity.  It provides the energy to take action.  Inspiration stems from it.  Certainly it is worth the two minutes it takes to focus each morning.