How to break a bad habit…
Jeremy Epstein
Professionally, I am passionate about #Marketing and #Web3. I have other passions as well and I'm not shy about sharing them on LinkedIn. ????????????????
tl;dr: It’s not about stopping yourself. It’s about catching yourself.
Like anybody, I am a collection of automatically running programs. We just call them “habits.”
Some of them are good and some are detrimental to my health. For example, I tend to overeat in the evenings.
I try to stop myself, but I found that my willpower muscle is spent by then and I break down. That’s probably the reason why sometimes I find myself on the couch watching TV.
Well, it turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong.
According to?Neuroscience (and a Tiny Dose of Emotional Intelligence) Reveals the Simple Trick to Break Nearly Any Bad Habit, the key isn’t to try and avoid the bad habit.
The answer is simple, yet difficult: You have to force yourself to think–not before, but during.
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Not, in my case,?before I eat?the ice cream — because that requires willpower I clearly don’t have — but?while?I’m eating the ice cream.
The moment of change comes from the moment of awareness during the act.
You may be eating the ice cream-or whatever your bad habit is- and you have to ask yourself then…”is this REALLY worth it? I may *feel* good now, but let’s imagine how I am going to feel later after I’m done.”
And since I usually feel bad after the habit is completed, it’s not difficult to imagine.
Do that enough times and you start to rewire your brain, building an alternate program that enables you to think about the ice cream and then, before you eat it, realize you’re not going to enjoy it because of how it will make you feel afterwards.
I have a tendency to berate myself when I “fall short” and don’t have the willpower.
Now, at least, I have an alternative strategy to change the things that I want to change about myself.
Maybe it will help others as well.