It’s so easy to acquire bad habits, but not so easy to break them. After all, they’re habits,
something you do habitually, without thinking. Over time, you’ve allowed them to be a regular
part of your life until you decide you want to be consciously in charge. Until you decide you want
to make an intentional change in your behavior.
Say you want to lower your sugar intake. But you’ve been eating something sweet after lunch
for years. Your mother always packed a nice chocolate chipper along with a ham sandwich in
your lunch box. And lo, these many years later, you crave a sweet treat every day. What can
you do?
The first step is to be aware of your habit. Eating a sweet is an action that comes to you
somewhat automatically. You know you eat sweets after lunch, and you have the thought that
you do, but just being aware won’t help you to change your behavior. You need to go beyond
automatic thoughts and feelings and become the creator of new thoughts and feelings. This
requires another level of effort, attention, and mental stick-to-it work.
Your automatic thoughts are part of a mental process that’s difficult to change. Hence the
bromide: Old habits die hard. But it can be done if you go beyond the automatic and create a
new level of thinking to intentionally produce different behavior.
How to Make a Change
Reimagine your life. The first thing you can do is reimagine your life without your old habit.
What would it be like if you weren’t a slave to sugar? You can imagine you would not have to
stock up on candies and there would be no panic when you discovered you’d run out. You
wouldn’t be ruled by your need for sweets. You’d have a new freedom of sorts. And that will give
you a picture of the future that’s worth working for.
Control your environment. Another thing you can do is control your environment. If you don’t
want to eat cookies, don’t buy them. Keep your home a cookie-free zone. It’s easier to resist
buying sweets in the grocery store than it is to resist eating them when they’re calling to you
from your kitchen cupboard.Just say no. When you resist that sweet the first time, it may take all your effort to say no to it.
But the next time it may be a tiny bit easier to say no. And easier still the next day. Until that day
when you’re tired, or you’re having a tough time and feel you need a reward. So you slide back
to old habits. The key is not to lose heart, but to try again. And again and again, until you
establish a new habit.
Substitute something else. Maybe, instead of eating a sweet after lunch, you make a
conscious effort to take a walk. You substitute the walk for the sweet. You may even feel better
having walked than you ever did eating a cookie. Again, there will be times when the sweet calls
you far more insistently than a walk outside. But don’t lose heart.
Keep at it. Persistence is key when you’re trying to change your behavior. Sure, you’ll
backslide. Everyone does sometimes. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead, look forward to
the next day when you’ll have another opportunity to do what you really want and need to do to
change your habit.
Nancy Travers is an Orange County Counseling professional. If you need safe, effective
counseling services, please get in touch. You can reach her here: