A
(slightly) older reader wrote to me recently, wanting to know how to change her
bad habits ingrained after so many many years of doing them. She wanted to
know, “Is it too late to change?”
And
I can understand the feeling. Doing bad habits for years makes them deeply
entrenched, and getting out of that trench might seem impossible, hopeless.
I
once was stuck, and felt the weight of built up bad habits crushing,
smothering, burying me. I felt helpless, like I had no control over myself, and
was too discouraged to even try to change.
This
discouragement is what does it. It’s not that changing bad habits is
impossible. But if we are so discouraged we don’t try, we will never change
them. To try and to fail is of little consequence, but to never start at all is
fatal to the habit change.
And
I’m here to tell you, that changing bad habits is not impossible. No matter how
long you’ve done them, no matter how many decades.
It
can be done. By you. By taking a single step.
Here’s
how.
Know as you start that you aren’t changing a mountain. You don’t
have to change years of bad actions. Those actions are gone — they’ve
evaporated into the ether, and you can forget them. Forgive yourself for them,
then forget them.
You
don’t need to run a marathon to change a habit. You just need to take a step.
And you can take a step.
Consider for a moment your bad habit. You might have a dozen, but
choose an easy one. Not the one you’re most afraid of — the one you think you
can lick.
Take
a step back and think about this habit. When do you do it? What things trigger
the habit — stress, food, drinking, socializing, boredom, sadness, waking,
being criticized? What need does the habit fulfill for you? Know that it does
fulfill a real need, and that’s why you keep doing it.
Realize something — stop here to drive home for yourself a crucial,
crucial point: you must realize that you don’t need this habit to fulfill this
need. You don’t need the habit. You can deal with stress in healthier
ways. You can beat boredom. You can cope. You do not need the habit, and
you will learn better ones with practice.
You
might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point, but you’ve done the hardest
part. Now you just need to take one more little step.
Commit to yourself to make a small tiny insignificant but powerful
step each day. Commit fully, not half-assed. Commit by writing it down, and
putting it up on your wall. Commit by telling a friend about it, and asking for
help. Commit by putting it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, your blog, a forum
you frequent. Be all in.
Find a replacement habit. One that is healthier. One that
fulfills the need. One that is easy. One that you can do after your trigger,
instead of your bad habit. One that you enjoy and will look forward to. If you
need to relieve stress, for example, consider walking, or pushups, or deep
breathing, or self-massage.
You’re
now ready to climb out of your trench. Remember, just a tiny tiny step.
Notice your urge to do the habit. Pause.
Don’t do the bad habit. Let the urge pass, then do your new replacement habit.
Repeat, noticing the urge, letting the urge pass, not doing the
bad habit, doing the good habit instead. You might mess up, but that’s OK.
You’ll get better with practice.
Practice as often as you can, every day. You’ll get really good at
it. Don’t worry about how long it takes. Keep doing it, one urge at a time.
Know,
Consider, Realize, Commit, Find, Notice, Repeat, Practice. These are easy steps
that don’t take a lot of work. You can do them as you sit here, reading this
post.
It’s
never too late. There is no habit that can’t be broken by the pressure of a
single footprint. Make that footprint by taking a single step, today.
***Zen Habits is one of the awesomest blogs that has inspired me to be a better person all the time. Thought it may make a difference to your life, too.
