How to Break a Bad Habit Permanently
Knowing how to break bad habits is worth its weight in gold.
I say that because, while good habits will generate the results you want in life, bad habits can destroy everything.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have some habits that don’t serve me well. Everyone does. The trick is becoming aware of them and then taking the time to weed them out of our lives.
Before we get too far into this, let’s establish what a habit is. “Not that foot, your other foot!”
A habit is an idea that has been planted in the garden of your subconscious mind and then repetitively fed.
After a sufficient period of time, you act on the idea without giving it any conscious thought.
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Allow me to give you an example of how a habit is formed.
Imagine you’re pulling on your pants in the morning. What foot do you put in first? I put my right foot in. If I tried to put my left foot in my pants first, I’d stagger and fall over. Why? Because when I was just a little guy, somebody came along and held my pants out. Then they said, “Put your foot in here. No, your other foot!”
You see, they had the pants prepared as if they were going to put it on. And so pretty soon I was doing it like they were doing it. They planted it in my mind and fed it through repetition.
Of course, you don’t just form habits for doing productive things like getting dressed. You develop habits to accomplish everything that you do, and some of them are not that productive.
A confession about my past…
I used to hang around bars all the time. Well, one day I went into my favorite establishment, I picked up a glass, and I looked around. I thought, “They’re all bums in here!” I put the glass down and said, “I’m never coming back here again, and I’m never going to drink this.” And I never did. But you know what I did? I went from spending all my money at the bar to betting it all on horses at the racetrack. So I went from helping somebody with a bar get wealthy to feeding the horses.
Then, one day I finally figured it out:
If you don’t consciously and deliberately replace a bad habit with a good habit, you’ll automatically create another unhealthy habit.
Changing just one or two habits makes a huge difference
You shouldn’t try to change more than two habits at once. It’ll become too big, and you won’t change any.
However, if you pick just one or two habits to replace, and stick with your plan until the new behavior becomes automatic, it will make a tremendous difference in your life.
Let me give you an example.
In the early 70s, I was hired to train all the agents at the Prudential Insurance Company of America. I trained them to do just two things…
Form the habit of being in front of a prospect by 9 a.m. and ask everybody they talked to, to purchase $100,000 worth of insurance. I told the agents they didn’t have to get a sale, just give each prospect the opportunity to say no.
Well, the sales in that company went up by hundreds of millions of dollars! Just by changing two habits.
So…What habit do you want to change?
Changing a habit takes a fair amount of energy and understanding, but I guarantee it’s worth the effort.
Here’s the steps, how you break a bad habit permanently:
Step One
Write down one thing—that goal, that dream, that challenge that you have not yet resolved in your life. The subconscious mind thrives on detail so describe it to yourself as vividly as you can.
Now remember, if you’re trying to break a habit that is not serving you, and you don’t consciously and deliberately replace it with something good, you’re going to form another unhealthy habit. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The question people often ask is how do you recognize that something is a bad habit?
You recognize it by is evaluating your behavior. It’s behavior that is giving you a result you don’t want.
Step Two
Write down every association that you connect to this habit/behavior/result. Write out everything you think about it, the good and the bad. Everything that the thought of it brings to your mind. Write it all out in crystal clear detail.
Next, ask yourself what the polar opposite of what you just wrote out would be. Then, on the separate sheet of paper, write out the behavior that is the opposite of the behavior you want to change.
When you’re finished, burn the piece of paper that has the negative behavior written on it. Although this is merely a symbolic gesture, it is important that you destroy it.
Step Three
Write the positive behavior three to five times every day and read it frequently.
Eventually, the new idea will start to take root in your subconscious mind, which will take the power away from the old habit. The negative habit will die from a lack of nourishment, and the positive one will take over.
Step Four
It’s time to get to the bottom of your habits—your paradigms.
Ask yourself the following questions about the habit you want to change:
• Why do I do this?
• What evidence do I have that it is a good idea?
• Where did I get such an idea?
Keep on digging until you’ve exhausted every possible scenario.
Finally, now that you know what your paradigm is on the topic you’ve chosen create an affirmation that will assist you in reprogramming your mind. The affirmation should be the opposite of your paradigm.
Pick an undesirable habit today and do this process every day. It will change your life.
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