Breaking Bad Habits and Addictions

A Story About David Lucero

David Lucero knows where he wants to go: He wants to go to El Paso, Texas.

David is about sixty years old and for the last three months, he has been living on a sidewalk across the street from a Greyhound bus station.

No one knows how long David has been homeless. He is one of America’s walking wounded—mentally ill, unable to take care of himself, unable to cope with the business of life. He is always happy to talk, although you have to repeat yourself a few times before he can understand you because David is losing his hearing.

One day someone tried to take him to a shelter for the homeless. All he had to do was get into the pickup truck. He had to make a decision — get in or stay on the street. The right decision could have started the cycle of healing and change, but it was more than David was capable of doing that morning. He decided to stay on the street, waiting for his imaginary ride to El Paso.

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We come into contact every day with people whose lives and families have been torn apart by bad habits: people addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, and illegal drugs; over-spenders, overeaters, and chronic worriers; negative thinkers, procrastinators, and people who won’t forgive themselves for something that happened long ago.

We have all seen firsthand how bad habits keep ordinary people from living happier and healthier lives. Everywhere you look, people want to know why they are unhappy. And they want to know what they can do about it.

The talk shows offer a constant menu of miracle cures for every type of bad habit imaginable—everything from quick weight-loss programs to 20-minute lessons in positive thinking that promise to cure depression. We are constantly bombarded by programs that promise effortless and immediate results: Lose weight fast while eating as much as you want! Guaranteed to work! Sure.

We are overwhelmed with solutions today. And the more solutions there are, the harder it is to find one that works. Many people have failed so many times that they’ve almost given up the battle. Others gave up a long time ago.

Establishing New Priorities

Can you change yourself? Is it possible to free yourself from bad habits? Can you really change in a meaningful and long-lasting way?  The answer to each of these questions is “yes.” But you can’t change in 24 hours, as some programs and self-help books promise.

What does it mean to change? To change means to establish new priorities—to choose a behavior that’s different from the one you’re using now. David Lucero is stuck on the street, waiting for a solution that doesn’t exist. When a real solution is right in front of his nose, he can’t see it.

David’s story is one of bad habits and bad decisions, and it’s probably filled with bad people and bad situations as well.

But at some point, we have to discard the factors, the people, and the situations that shaped us. Focusing on the past won’t help us solve today. At some point we have to take responsibility for our own lives.

It was most likely bad habits and bad choices that brought David to this point—day after day and year after year—until he hit rock bottom. That’s always the way it is.

Learning how to free ourselves from bad habits starts with the realization that we cause our own feelings. We are the major cause of our own problems. The moment we grasp that simple fact, that’s when we’re ready to step into the process of self-change that will lead to freedom from the habits that keep us from living a more satisfying life. And when we’re free from our bad habits, the people around us will be free from the person we used to be.

All people can bring about superficial changes in themselves. But freeing yourself from a self-destructive habit like smoking or overeating requires a deep, long-lasting change. A bad habit is like an iceberg. You can’t beat the habit if you approach it as if it were only as large as what you can see on the surface.

Franz Kafka said, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Any book or program that aims to help people break bad habits must reveal the whole iceberg that lies below the surface.

You can’t eliminate the whole thing in one day, but if you take a step-by-step approach, you can eliminate the bad habit sooner than you thought possible. It is going to take effort on your part.

You can’t eat whatever you want and lose weight, no matter how many times you hear it on the talk shows. But you can learn to eat more healthy foods and stop eating the unhealthy stuff that’s part of your life now.

To free yourself from bad habits, you must stop hiding the truth from yourself.

Overeaters, smokers, and chronic procrastinators have more in common with people like David than meets the eye. They all go to great lengths to hide the truth from themselves about the destructive nature of their bad habits, and too often lives and families are destroyed before they become aware of the fact they are trapped in a cage of self-destructive behavior.

Does professional therapy work? Can it help people break bad habits before the habit destroys their lives? The dropout rate is astonishing: 45% of clients who seek a professional therapist drop out of therapy after two or three sessions.

Do programs help? Millions of smokers have quit forever without following a treatment program. On the other hand, many people who try a smoking-cessation program are not able to quit, no matter how many different programs they try. In fact, some research suggests that for every person who quits smoking by following a treatment program, there are almost twenty persons who quit on their own.

What conclusion should we draw from all of this? It’s pretty clear, I think. You have a better chance of freeing yourself from a bad habit by becoming your own coach — by taking responsibility for your own program. And by facing the truth about yourself.

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