Jun
14
How to Fix Bad Habits
I’ll cut straight to the chase.. you get rid of, or fix a bad habit by practicing a new good habit in it’s place.
What’s the bad habit you want to rid yourself of? What’s an opposite or opposing good habit? Now consciously practice that new good habit every chance you get. And when you catch yourself acting out your bad habit again don’t beat yourself up, just try to understand the underlying issue that has you behave that way and then consciously practice your new good habit every chance you get.
You don’t get better at something by doing less of it. You get better at something by practicing a new way of doing it.
If you’re stingy you don’t become generous by being less “stingy” but rather by practicing the habit of generosity.
If you lie, cheat or steal you don’t become honest by lying, cheating or stealing less!.You try to understand why you lie, cheat or steal and you replace those bad habits with opposing good habits of honesty and integrity. And then you practice, practice, practice every chance you get.
Our habits are not genetic but rather a choice. Sometimes such an automated choice that it’s actually becomes an “apparently unconscious” choice. As human beings we learn our habits by assimilation, association and every other form of imitation based on our surroundings as we grow up. We also develop our ingrained habits by repulsion or in contrast to what we’ve been exposed to if we’ve deemed that behavior undesirable.
Anyway you look at it, a habit is an ingrained & automated action / reaction and the only way to change it is by practicing a new healthier habit in it’s place.
I learned a long time ago that if there’s a huge hole in the middle of a street I’m more likely to not fall in that hole if I just choose a different street to walk down. Walking down the same street & simply trying to avoid the huge hole is a recipe for falling in the hole again. It’s a lesson I learned late in life, but still long enough ago to put it into effective practice and actually save my life!
