DO YOU HAVE THE WILLPOWER - to break a bad habit?
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Are you an addict? How about cigarettes, cream cakes or television? They are all habit-forming and potentially harmful. The good news is that you CAN quit. And it’s not as hard as you think...
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Most of us know the Oscar Wilde quote: ‘I can resist anything, except temptation.’ It seems amusing and blindingly obvious - yet within this little statement lies the crucial secret to breaking any of the bad habits we all live with.
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When we think of bad habits we usually think of smoking, drinking too much, gambling or nail biting. But there are many others - such as excessive eating, watching too much television, compulsive spending, or taking too little exercise. The strange thing about bad habits is this: Why, if we so dearly want to stop them, does the addiction seem to be stronger than our willpower?
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The answer lies in Oscar Wilde’s quote - temptation. The pattern of our daily routine keeps us imprisoned in the addiction by exposing us to frequent temptation. If you drink too heavily, you will have acquired a group of similarly afflicted friends at the pub who will do their best to keep you hitting the bottle with them.
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TAKE AVOIDING ACTION
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To break any habit you have to steer clear of the situations or people who lure you back to the bad habit. You have to take pains to avoid temptation. This might mean a drinker needs to take a different route home to avoid his favourite pub, or a compulsive spender might have to skirt the neighbourhood of her preferred shops.
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All the situations that predispose you to indulging in your habit have to be exposed and eliminated. So not only might you have to avoid the stores if you are a shop aholic, but also not carry credit cards, and only ever buy with cash, so you can see exactly how much you are spending.
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RAISE YOUR AWARENESS
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Paying with cash raises your awareness of a bad habit, therefore helping to stop it. This awareness is a crucial element, so, if you overeat, then resolving to eat only in one room at home, such as the dining room, forces you to carry all food to that room from the kitchen. This will raise your
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awareness of how much you overeat and make you feel more discomfort about continuing this bad habit, so it is more likely you will quit. Of course, you will always be particularly vulnerable to relapsing at times of stress. The key is to be prepared using the acronym HALT. This stands for: HUNGRY ANGRY LONELY TIRED.
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These are the feelings that make us weak and therefore open to temptation, so you must avoid them at all costs. Part of the reason for this is that our habits fill a need, and understanding what role the addiction plays in our lives is vital to kicking any habit.
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Often the habit calms us down when we are stressed, or cheers us up when we are low. So to break the habit you have to find other ways of relaxing or dealing with despondency; in other words, you have to replace your habit with a new habit - a healthy one.
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FILL THE VACUUM
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The reason most people fail to extinguish their bad habits is they simply try to stop, but without replacing the habit with anything. This produces a vacuum in their lives, accentuating all the terrible feelings the bad habit helped them deal with. This strategy makes it more likely that you will eventually return to your bad habit with a sigh of relief; vowing never to desert your comfortable old dependency again.
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So if your bad habit is watching too much television, plan to replace the television with healthier alternatives, such as reading a book. Or if you know when you will start to crave a cigarette or comfort food, have ready-prepared alternatives such as going for a quick walk, ringing a friend, munching some healthy fruit, or drinking a glass of water. Your replacement routine should help to remove you from temptation, so a walk might take you out of the house and away from the kitchen.
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PREVENT ACCIDENTS
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Also ensure no enticement is present in the house or where you work, so throw away all cigarettes, matches and ashtrays if smoking is your bad habit, or ensure no fattening foods are in your kitchen if comfort eating is your addiction.
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The idea behind this procedure is the length of time it will take you to get to chocolate or a cigarette. If you have to go to the shops for them, it will give you longer to talk yourself out of returning to the bad habit. If chocolate or a smoke is only an arm’s length away, you won’t have long enough to dissuade yourself from succumbing to temptation. Most people who relapse into a bad habit do so because temptation seems to ‘accidentally’ come their way. But whenever these situations are
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examined by psychiatrists, it is usually possible to see that the ‘accident’ was unconsciously engineered by the addict. So being offered a cigarette at a party may precipitate a return to smoking, but was it not possible to foresee that some of your favourite smoking friends were going to be there? Similarly, popping into the shop for a bar of chocolate was too easy, as you had to be there to post a letter anyway. Instead of letting these ‘accidents’ happen, look forward each day to the crunch moments when temptation is most likely to come your way, and while you are in the early vulnerable stages of giving up your bad habit, aim to prevent any such ‘mishaps’ occurring.
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You should also ensure that returning to the bad habit is as costly and as unpleasant as possible, because craving seems to make the bad habit seem alluring.
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For example, if you support one political party, or a particular cause, resolve that you will donate money to the opposing party, or contrary cause, for every cigarette you smoke, or for every day and every pound you are over your target weight. Get a friend to make you go through with this contract.
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Sometimes these seemingly simple tips seem too trivial to those who have become pessimistic about ever being able to break a bad habit, which keeps coming back. In fact, followed through properly, these powerful steps are the same used by specialists advising on kicking the deepest habits, from heroin addiction to severe alcoholism.
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All habits can be booted out of your life, but first you have to believe it is worth it, as the start of breaking a habit is never easy. If you are in any doubts about the need to crush your bad habit, ask yourself what your life will be like in five years’ time if you still haven’t conquered it.
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