Mindfulness: Three Steps to Breaking Bad Habits

Like everyone else on this planet, I have habits.  I tend to go to sleep about the same time at night on the whole.  And I tend to wake up more or less the same time every morning.  I brush my teeth without really thinking about it, and I take the same route to work each day, sometimes not realizing what has occurred along the way.  This is a good thing!  If I had to continue to exert mental energy in paying close attention to every detail of driving the car and deciding when to take a left or right turn, in the same way I had to do while learning to drive, I would be a mental wreck by the time I made it to work each day.

A habit is something we do routinely, without a lot of conscious thought.  It saves us time and energy.  But sometimes we form unconscious habits that are not as good for us.  But since they are habits, they keep repeating despite less than optimum results.  For instance, there have been times I have mindlessly eaten a whole box of snacks while working at home.  Sometimes I only become aware of this as I reach for one more cookie, and come up only with crumbs.  I let out a sigh, saying to myself "you did it again!"  The addiction recovery community has a word and definition for this: Insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

So how do we break these unconscious bad habits?  Take these three steps to build the skill of mindfulness as a tool for changing behaviors.

1.  Become aware of the bad habit as it happens.  This sounds simple, and it is; but it is not necessarily easy!  It helps to set an intention to notice the bad habit, including when it is happening, and what triggers or sets off the habitual behavior.  Usually setting this intention is enough to start becoming conscious or aware of the habit as it's happening.  After all, you can't make changes to something you're not aware of!

2.  Become proactive in how you think about the habit.  With an awareness of the habit taking place, you can proactively intervene with yourself.  Pay mindful attention to your thoughts and emotions.  Notice the thoughts that keep the habit going, such as "I might as well finish the box now that I've eaten most of them anyway."  With mindful awareness of these rationalizations, come up with more realistic counter thoughts, such as, "Now that I notice I'm mindlessly eating cookies, I can make a decision to stop eating in this moment."

3.  Become free of negative and counterproductive thoughts and behaviors.  Mindful awareness makes this possible by inserting a space for conscious decision as habits try to repeat.  As the great philosopher and pioneer psychologist William James said, "In between the stimulus and the response is a space.  In that space lies your freedom to choose.  In your choice lies your future growth and happiness."