For some of us, it’s smoking. For others, its overeating. Whatever it is, we feel the pull of a bad habit that we know we ought to kick but we just can’t. But don’t despair. You can make new habits. And here’s a quick guide to get you started.
Know When and Where
“One of the things that’s interesting about habits is you do them mindlessly,” says Dr. Art Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Texas. “This is why people can walk in the house from the garage and not be 100 percent sure whether they closed the garage door.” To successfully break a bad habit, then, you first have to become conscious of exactly when and where you’re likely to engage in it, so you know how to intervene.
Zero In on the Why
Every bad habit has a payoff of some sort, or we wouldn’t get started on it in the first place. Eating junk food, for instance, relieves hunger and is often used as a stress-buster for many people. It is reinforced. It gives me what I want. So just deciding I don’t want to do it anymore isn’t going to stop that. Instead, be blunt with yourself. Look at what has stopped you in the past from moving on, because if you ignore some of that—especially the reasons why you don’t want to change—then you’re not likely to do anything about it.
Revamp Your Surroundings
What if you want to swap TV binge watching for exercise? Revamping your surroundings to meet that goal might look like this—lay out workout clothes ahead of time so you’ll be ready to go. If you can, put actual physical distance between you and your bad habit. To prevent junk food snacking, for instance, keep those munchies in a hard-to-reach spot. Research has found that secretaries in an office setting ate 48% more candy when it was kept on their desks than when it was stored 6 feet away. Visibility matters too. If they didn’t see it, they didn’t think about. And that meant no candy munching.
Swap the Old for the New
Markham says, “At the end of the day, long-term changes in habits ultimately require setting up a different set of habits.” Ideally, your new habit should be one that actually prevents you from doing the behavior you’re trying to avoid. In my case, I used to stop by the snack machine in between classes at school. I told myself, “It will pick me up and give me more energy.” But it made my cholesterol soar, eating so much fat. So I swapped the chips and chocolate bars for eating a bigger breakfast in the morning and carrying a water bottle to school. A better breakfast kept me going all morning long and I didn’t feel the need to hit the snack machines.
Change Up Your Self-Talk
When saying “no” to temptation, what you tell yourself matters. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that participants who said, “I don’t do—” were able to resist temptation significantly more effectively than those who said, “I can’t do—.”
Why would that make a difference? Saying “I don’t do” implies an intentional personal choice of resisting temptation. It also strengthens your self-control and increases your belief that you can succeed. But when you say “I can’t do,” it implies you’re only saying no because of some external force. Someone else is calling the shots, so to speak. It’s not really your decision.
Plan for Temptation
You will, of course, be tempted. And if you wait to figure out what you’re going to do to fight it—in the moment temptation strikes—when you feel the urge for that 2nd piece of cheesecake–you’re setting yourself up for failure. Old habits are strong and unless you have a new plan of attack, you’ll be pulled along quite easily.
Markham says, if you’re trying to avoid overeating, buffets can be dangerous. So when you know you’re going to attend a potluck dinner, you might have a plan like this, “I’ll swing by the dessert table first to pick up a small plate, then wait for everyone else to go through line ahead of me. When all the offerings have been picked over, I’ll fill my plate. Since I’ll be at the end of the line, a lot of the food will be gone by the time I get there, and I won’t have an opportunity to over-indulge.”
Although many temptations are unavoidable, don’t intentionally put yourself in vulnerable situations (think alcoholics in bars). If you go somewhere where you’ve indulged in the bad habit before, it will be easier to succumb.
Record Your Habit
It’s a little known secret that if you start tracking on paper something you want to avoid, you’ll automatically cut back on those behaviors. Many people asked by their doctors or dieticians to keep track of what and how much they eat, sub-consciously eat less than they used to.
For some kinds of habits, it’s helpful to jot down or journal what you were thinking when you were engaged in your bad habit. This is especially true for habits that involve giving yourself permission to do it (such as “one doughnut won’t hurt”). Writing down your rationale makes these automatic kinds of thoughts a little more obvious and puts you in a position of having to say, “Wait a minute, what am I really telling myself?”
Reach Up
Many of us make promises to eat better or exercise more. But in a week or two, those promises soon become lost in our busy schedules. Our old habits are strong. And it’s going to take more than a strong will-power to make a new start. That’s why I have found such encouragement from a story in the Old Testament–in the book of Daniel. In this story, 4 young Hebrew slaves were confronted with the problem of eating rich food from the king’s table or going against their conscience. They saw foods that went against their Jewish upbringing and food that had been offered to idols. What were they to do?
The first thing Daniel and his companions did was to make a choice. They “purposed in their hearts” they would not go along with the crowd. This was similar to one of our 7 steps. They changed their self-talk. Instead of just saying, “I can’t do this…” they told themselves, “I don’t.” Daniel also had a plan to succeed. He asked the king’s steward to give them an alternative menu they could try for 10 days. At the end of that time, he could evaluate whether it was safe for them to keep eating this way. At the end of those 10 days, Daniel and his friends appeared healthier than the other young men, so they were allowed to keep eating vegetables and drinking water instead of the rich meats and the king’s wine.
And most of all, Daniel and his friends didn’t rely on themselves. They looked to God to help them make the right choices and stick to it. We often need a power bigger than ourselves to make changes and form new habits. Prayer has helped many people to do that. It has helped them move on, leaving sickness and bad habits far behind.
Excerpt from Vibrant Life/2018
