People almost never succeed in breaking a bad habit. We often hear stories about people who quit smoking or drinking only to get back to their old ways and start the process all over again.
Being addicted to your bad habit, whatever it might be, can enslave you.
Chronic obsession with a bad habit can rob you from being present – you’ll be preoccupied with the memory of your bad habit to the detriment of being in the now. And if it becomes compulsive, it will begin to harm your productivity and also affect your self-esteem and sense of self-worth.
You essentially become a prisoner of your bad habit.
Read on.
(Reference:
- If you want to form a new *good* habit in 21 days, see this post.
- If you want to recover from “habit-relapse,” see this post.
- If you want to dig into “unconscious habits,” and fix them, see this post.
- If you want to find out when is the best time of the day to work on new habits, see this post.)
1. Why Breaking a Bad Habit is Hard?
Breaking bad habits, especially the deeply entrenched kind, is hard because our brain has come to identify them as necessary means for survival.
For example, if you’re addicted to nicotine, and you’ve been exposed to it long enough to reinforce its pleasurable effects, your brain will, at some point, come to see that stimulus as “normal” and even as a necessary part of its proper functioning.
And whenever this stimulus is not available, your brain will react. The stronger the addiction, the stronger and the more intense the cravings are going to be. In fact, when you’re badly addicted to your habit, your brain will send signals to your body and demand that substance or behavior with the same intensity as it would when it comes to your most fundamental biological needs like going to the bathroom, drinking water and eating.
Your environmental “cues” also play an important part in reinforcing bad habits. The items, places, and people that come with the habit trigger the desire in you to engage in your habit. Understanding your triggers and focusing on how to respond to them is a great step in the right direction, but you should begin slowly.
2. Don’t Go Cold Turkey
The most common and the most ineffective way to break a bad habit is to go cold turkey. The effects of completely eliminating a source of pleasure and denying your brain access to it will create massive resistance. You will experience intense cravings and you brain will pretty much go nuts on you.
If you’re serious about breaking a habit, then you must take it slow. You have to recognize that breaking bad habits is hard but if you don’t make drastic changes, you can break a bad habit in a month or two. To that effect, you may benefit from using my “Two Steps Forward, One Step Backwards” Method.
3. Two Steps Forward, One Step Backwards
Day 1: The first day of this method starts with you performing the bad habit as you usually would. Pay particular attention to your triggers and to what extent they’re influencing your desire to engage in the bad habit.
Day 2: You’re not allowed to perform the bad habit on this day regardless of how intensely you think you need it. You must abstain from it at all costs. Occupy yourself with other activities and try to distract yourself from focusing on the pleasurable memory of the habit and from the triggers.
Day 3: You must engage in the bad habit on this day even if you feel you can go longer. This is an important part of the process because we want to condition your brain to accept “loss” of the stimulus. And as I mentioned earlier, if you go cold turkey and eliminate a pleasure source indefinitely, you will experience intense cravings and symptoms of “withdrawal”.
Days 4 and day 5: you’re not allowed to engage in the habit on this day and, again, you should abstain from the habit at all costs – but with the knowledge that you will be able to engage in it the next day.
Day 6: You’re free to engage in the habit, but more importantly, you must engage with it even if you feel like you can go longer.
Days 7, 8, 9: Abstain.
Day 10: Must Engage.
Days 11, 12, 13, and 14: Abstain.
You see the pattern…
You will keep going through this process until you’re able to go for seven full days without performing your bad habit. Once you’ve reached that goal, you must practice your negative habit on the following day and only for that day. This is the first phase.
The second phase is a weekly phase. Now that you’ve been able to go for a full week without the bad habit, you now have to go for two weeks. And when you pass, you must engage in your bad habit the day after.
After you’ve engaged in your habit for that day, it’s time to go for three weeks. When you pass, you have to engage in your habit again… and so and so forth until you’re able to go for 2 full months without the habit.
Once you’re able to go for 2 full months without the habit, you’re pretty much able to resist it without having to re-engage in it at any point in the future. Your finally have power over your bad habit and you’ve successfully conditioned your brain to live without it.
For an alternative approach, see my post on the Art of Changing Bad Habits.
4. Why it Works?
This process works because it allows you to effectively counter the withdrawal symptoms that entice you to re-engage in the behavior. It does that by slowly de-conditioning your brain to let go of the bad stimulus.
Moreover, following this process phase by phase allows you to build a string of successful attempts and allow you to gain more strength and momentum. Doing so will empower you to keep going through the process and to continue making consistent gradual progress. In fact, after abstaining for 2 full weeks from the bad habit, re-engaging in it on the day after won’t feel like much of a reward. You might even experience unpleasant effects when you perform the bad habit. This is so because the real reward has become the length of time you’ve been able to abstain from the bad habit. The reward is not the bad habit itself anymore.
This approach also works better because you won’t be putting up a resistance against your bad habit. You’re not forcing your brain to adapt to “no stimulus” overnight. You’re allowing your brain to grow out your bad habit gradually and you’re assuring it that it will continue to have access to the bad habit as long as it abstains for a short period of time. By expecting the reward, the resistance to change will decrease and that will help you get rid of that habit easier and faster.