Stopping Bad Habits With The Power Of Your Mind (2/3)
How To Change Bad Habits
- Become conscious of your habit to remove its unconscious control.
- Most people don’t want to give up their bad habit, just its bad effects.
- Overcoming habits is a battle between the conscious and subconscious mind.
In the last article we talked about the automatic nature of habits, which can cause people to continually repeat established habits over and over again without even thinking about them.
You also took part in a practical exercise which demonstrated the “psychological discomfort” that can result from stopping a habit.
Understanding these two principles are essential to successfully overcoming habits, so if you haven’t read the first article please do so before continuing with article.
Becoming Conscious Of Habits
In this article you are going to begin the first stage of stopping a bad habit, by raising your conscious awareness of it.
This is an extremely important step because as mentioned in the first article, habits are largely driven by the unconscious part of your brain which causes you repeat your habit without giving it much thought.
By becoming conscious of your habit, you will start to break down the unconscious control that habit is having over your life. So lets move on to the first step, identifying your habit.
Identify Your Habit
The first step to overcoming a bad habit is to first decide upon what habit you want to stop, and then admit to yourself that it is a habit. So do this now by writing the following on a piece of paper.
The habit I will stop is…
Note : Please write this down on paper, and not just think about it. Writing it down will help to increase conscious awareness of your habit, and signal to your mind that it is something important which it should pay attention to.
If you can’t be bothered to write it down, or didn’t participate in the exercise in the first article, you are signalling to your subconscious that you don’t really want to stop your habit.
Now that you have identified your habit, the next step is to decide whether or not you really want to give it up.
Desire To Stop & Change Your Bad Habit
If you want to stop a bad habit, you must strongly desire to give up that habit. If you do not have a strong desire to stop your habit then it is very unlikely you will overcome it, as the mind does not give up that which it regards to be desirable.
Most people who say they strongly desire to stop a habit actually do not really want to stop the habit itself, but rather they want to avoid the negative effects that habit is having on their life.
This is a very important difference, because if you only want to avoid the negative effects that habit is causing you, then you will still view your habit as something desirable. As a result, you will stick with it.
For example, many smokers will tell you that they want to give up smoking and are trying to stop. If you ask them why, they will usually reply by saying they want to stop because it is bad for their health.
However, they will also tell you that they enjoy smoking, which is why they are finding it so hard to give up.
As long as the smoker sees smoking as a desirable and pleasurable activity, they are very unlikely to give it up and will always be a slave to their unconscious habit.
I have used the word “slave” purposefully here, because if you don’t have conscious control over your life the unconscious part of your brain will control your life for you.
People who do not have control over their lives and who are ruled by others are slaves, which is exactly what happens when you have a habit you cannot stop.
So decide right now that you are going to stop your bad habit, and no longer be a slave to it. Write the following sentence down and complete it.
I consciously control my life and I am not a slave to my subconscious mind. I strongly desire and will succeed in stopping…
Intensify The Desire To Stop Your Habit
Consciously deciding to stop your habit is only half the battle, the real difficulty lies in overcoming the unconscious nature of habits. However in order to do this, you need to strengthen the conscious thinking part of your part.
So to help you with this process you need to intensify your desire to stop your bad habit, and one way you can do this is by making a list of all the negative effects your habit is having on your life.
Think of all the reasons why you want to stop your habit. Is it affecting your social life? Is it affecting how you feel about yourself? Is it affecting you financially?
The more negative effects you can come up with, the stronger you will make your desire to stop your habit. Do this now on your piece of paper.
Negative effects my bad habit is having on my life…
What Do You Gain From Your Habit?
A large majority of the habits people have provide them with some sort of benefit. Usually this benefit acts as a kind of comfort factor.
For example, if a person is feeling unhappy they can eat some food to temporarily improve their mood.
In cases such as this a habit becomes a “crutch” upon which you automatically fall back on when something happens to you, or you feel a certain way.
This increases the desirability of maintaining the habit, because it is now seen as something which helps you get through certain periods of your life.
This “help” can come in the form of alleviating boredom, changing your emotional state or overcoming nerves.
However whilst this habit may appear to help you during these periods, it is in fact only providing you with a short term temporary solution. One that ultimately has long term negative consequences on your life.
By examining the possible benefits you receive from your habit, you will therefore gain a better understanding of the times in which you are most vulnerable to going back to your old habit.
Complete this final exercise now, by writing down what you gain from your habit.
My habit helps me to…
End Of Preparatory Stage
The purpose of this article was to get you to start consciously thinking about your bad habit, and why you are doing it.
This is an important stage, because initially overcoming a bad habit is a battle between the strength of your conscious mind, and the programmed behaviours in your subconscious mind.
At the moment your habit is a deeply engrained subconscious pattern of behaviour, which causes you to act out your habit automatically with little or no conscious control.
Due to the pleasurable association that has been attached to your habit, your subconscious mind will therefore naturally try to hold onto this habit.
Your job is to strengthen your conscious mind for long enough to reverse this subconscious behaviour, which you have started to do in this article. In the next article, we shall continue this process.
That’s all for today, come back tomorrow for part 3.
