Are You Stuck in a Bad Habit?

Many people who are suffering from bad habits know they have a problem, but they don’t know what to do about it — or they feel powerless to change. They may spend years telling themselves they are going to change “one day.”

Fear of failure keeps many people stuck in their bad habits. They hide from the truth by telling themselves that they’re waiting for the “perfect” weight-loss program, the perfect smoking-cessation program, or the perfect time to stop drinking.

“I’ll change when the time is right,” is a common phrase. Of course there will never be a “right time,” but they haven’t been able to break out of their verbal cage.

What is sad is that some people simply are unable to make a serious commitment to change — even when their life depends on it. For example, a person may have a struggle with emphysema. They may sleep every night with an oxygen tank next to their bed. But they never quit smoking. They may cut down, but they never quit, even though they know it is killing them.

A number of years ago, there was an article about a woman in New Jersey who had a tracheotomy as a result of cancer. She was no longer able to breathe through her mouth, so she placed lighted cigarettes into the hole in her throat and inhaled the smoke that way. She was still smoking when she died.

Change is often very threatening. Even good change may threaten our security. When we’re accustomed to something, the thought of losing it can cause us to panic and freeze where we are, no matter how much we stand to gain by changing.

“John” knows the health risks that smokers face, but he doesn’t want to give up all the little satisfactions that smoking gives him — the pleasant anticipation he experiences after a meal when he is about to light a cigarette, the satisfaction of feeling the cigarette between his fingers, the nicotine rush that goes straight to his brain every time he takes a puff, the security of knowing he has an extra carton of his favorite brand stashed away in the closet.

The only part of smoking that John wants to give up is the part that threatens to give him lung cancer. He wishes he could somehow eliminate that part and hang onto all the other little perks that hooked him in the first place.

John may say he wants to quit smoking — and he isn’t lying when he says this. He sincerely thinks he wants to quit. His problem is that he hasn’t come to grips with the real reason he smokes. As soon as he is able to do so, he will be in a position to move forward. When he is able to admit that he likes lots of little things about his habit, he will be in a position to substitute healthy new habits for the old destructive ones.

However, as long as he hides from the truth—from the real reasons why he smokes—he will conveniently shift responsibility from himself to a “force” that’s stronger than he is. When a smoker says, “I really want to quit, but I just can’t,” what he really means is that he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his bad choices.

For many people, there is a certain comfort in believing that they can’t avoid the destructive path they’re following, even though they know where it leads in the end. They are locked into a self-defeating mindset that says, “I know I’m doomed, but what can I do about it?” The answer is that they can do a great deal about it, but not until they are able to see through the mind games they play.

Why do we play these games, even when we know our habits are destroying us? I think the answer goes something like this: As soon as we break out of the cage we’ve been hiding in, we will have to admit that we had the power to do it all along.

That can be a scary thing. A person who frees himself from a bad habit that has dominated his life for years or decades can be terrified of the prospect of having to admit that he wasted a large part of his life by failing to take responsibility for his own behavior.

“Jane” knows she may be drinking herself to death, but subconsciously she tells herself that it would be far worse to be free of her habit. If she were free, she would have to spend the rest of her life wondering what she might have made of her life if she had realized sooner that she was free to make better choices.

This is the danger of focusing on the past. When all you can see is what lies behind, you aren’t able to understand that new opportunities present themselves as soon as you make the decision to walk in a different direction.

As you learn to shift your thoughts from the past to the present, you will be taking a giant step towards freeing yourself from your bad habit.

Related posts:

1. Break Your Bad Habit in 21 Days or Less Let me ask you something. Do you have one of these bad habits? Smoking Overeating...
2. Break Bad Habits with Hypnosis The difficulty most people encounter when they first try to break a bad habit is that habits ...
3. Breaking Bad Habits Is A Process, Not An Event Is it possible to free yourself from bad habits? Can people really change in any...