I don’t claim to have obliterated all my bad habits, but I have made great strides in my quest for a better life by consistently exerting effort to build better ones.
Much of my perspective on habits is from my own experience (years of struggling to build good ones), but I’ve also been greatly influenced by The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and by yogic philosophy. Also, I’m currently reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is further reinforcing my approach towards habits.
Building better habits has made me a more peaceful and happier person, and helped me create a life I want to live — as I’m sure it has done for many others.
It hasn’t been easy, but I think that’s part of why it’s worth it.
I see habits in a dynamic way — part of an ever-evolving system. Our job is to keep choosing the habits we want in our lives. But when we fail to choose well, we must try again. Otherwise, we can fall into despair and the comfort of old routines.
1. Breaking Bad Habits Isn’t Always Straightforward.
When we want to quit a bad habit, the first thing we will often do is to say we will simply quit. If that works, the habit likely wasn’t so entrenched.
By itself, “simply quitting” only works on the most trivial bad habits.
2. New Habits Override Old Habits.
The second — and I believe the most effective — approach to breaking bad habits is to replace them with new and better habits.
This approach has multiple benefits:
- It is an active approach, though it takes a decision to build a new habit, it is not merely intellectual. It requires action, and it exercises and strengthens our will.
- The new habit will likely lower our anxiety levels and decrease psychological entropy, providing us with positive reinforcement and increasing our confidence, lessening the need for bad habits.
- If the new habit really “clicks” with us, it may create a greater sense of reward than ones we are having a hard time breaking, enabling us to more easily cast them aside.
3. Addiction Usually Requires a Lifestyle Change.
It may be the case — as it is with deeply entrenched bad habits or those that might be called addictions — that we cannot simply replace the habit. In these cases, we have to go even further and perform a full lifestyle overhaul.
Addictions are part of deep existential issues that must be dealt with.
They usually mean that a person isn’t in the right place in life — they’re on the wrong road, or at the very least, they need to adjust their perspective.
But, in any case, whether we’re dealing with an easily broken bad habit or a full-blown addiction, building good habits is the bedrock of changing our lives for the better.
Around 2020 or so, I quit vaping nicotine, but I hadn’t planned on it.
Vaping wasn’t a long-term thing for me; I might have done it for about a year. I did it because I was depressed. It was what got me up in the morning. I would wake up craving my first hit of nicotine and the headrush that came with it.
Around the same time, I was slowly building better habits — lifting weights, jogging, etc.
I was beginning to feel better. And out of the blue… one day, I woke up and decided I was done. I threw all my vaping devices and vape liquids in the trash can, tied up the trash bag, and threw it in the outside garbage can.
Other than a few temptations — like smelling someone else vaping while I’m out somewhere — I haven’t looked back.
My wife remembers that moment clearly.
She says one of the things she loves about me is that I can simply quit things.
But it was not as easy as it looked.
I credit the good habits I was building; they made quitting easy.
In other words, it was not my will to stop vaping that allowed me to quit. It was my will to feel better and create better habits that allowed it. I bring all this up because I think it’s where most people get habits, addictions, and temptation wrong.
Breaking bad habits is less about using will to stop the cycle and more about using it to create new and better cycles.
Instead of focusing on the bad habit we’re trying to stop, we can and should focus on what things we would like to do instead.
4. Building a Good Habit Can Be More Difficult Than We Expect.
It’s easy to assume that building a habit is a simple and straightforward process. In some ways, it is. But the amount of will required to solidify a habit is usually more than we expect. And, at least early on in the process, we often don’t make it as far as we originally envisioned we would.
To break the mold of old entrenched habits — the type that pull us backwards — we have to force ourselves to do things that, at their outset, are often difficult.
- Starting a morning workout routine vs. doom scrolling.
- Going for a walk when we get home from work.
- Making a home-cooked dinner vs. ordering pizza.
- Reading a book vs. watching TV.
These are not always easy when we’ve normalized the bad habits we have.
In fact, they can seem downright impossible.
This unexpected resistance can easily discourage us. Yet, each time we perform a good habit, under the surface, deep in our unconscious mind, things are shifting. An averaging effect occurs, and the amount of energy devoted to bad habits becomes rerouted to the new habits.
5. Bad Habits Don’t Stand A Chance As Long As We Don’t Give Up On Building Better Ones.
It’s important not to get discouraged when we fall back into old routines. It helps to see habit building as something long-term — over the course of years instead of days, weeks, or months.
Habit creation is how we systematize our lives and how we move towards the things we want.
Bad habits usually take up a lot of energy.
As long as we don’t give up building good habits, that energy will eventually be unlocked and become available for other things.
6. The More We Perform a Habit, the More Power We Give It.
Each time we perform a habit rep, we are more likely to come back to it.
This is how the value of habits starts compounding.
It’s a key to both why building good habits is so powerful and to becoming a “good habit-building machine”.
7. Good Habits Bridge the Gap Between Chaos and Order.
Good habits set the stage for a better life.
As difficult as building good habits is, not doing so makes life exponentially more difficult.
If you really slow down for a moment, you’ll start to notice that much of life is a series of habits. That’s part of the reason it’s so important to make sure your habits are taking your life in the direction you want to go.
