A Framework to Break a Bad Habit
Do you have a habit that you detest? A habit that is so ingrained into your life that breaking it would mean changing your life forever. It may not be a habit that is necessarily wrong in the eyes of the world, but a habit that you know is wrong for you. I had one such habit and I managed to break it. This is how it happened…
I have been a compulsive binge-watcher even before the word existed. It was the easiest, most natural thing for me, to sit in front of the TV.
I would surf the 30 odd channels, pick up 3 shows and watch them in parallel to skip commercials. I did not even have a quality filter on my binge-watching. I would watch average movies over and over again just because they were on air.
Until recently, when I got married and settled in a new house I decided to cut my cable TV connection since my husband and I were not home very often. I had Netflix of course but there was a challenge in making it work on my TV. I needed my husband’s phone hotspot to turn it on. Somehow this small logistical obstacle to watching TV changed my life.
People say old habits die hard since our neural pathways are formed basis them and as we grow older our neuro-plasticity gets lesser. I have found this very true in my case, since many a time I have constantly struggled to change my compulsive TV watching. Entire weekends would go by utterly wasted and Sunday evenings would be worse since they would usher in my guilt trips.
I would beat myself up about how I have never used my creativity or even my basic humanity into doing something useful.
All that changed when I put a simple blocker to watching TV.
A blocker that involved some effort to make my TV work followed by a blocker in figuring out what to watch rather than watch anything.
This changed my life hugely. For one, I finally lived up to my GoodReads reading challenge for last year. I tidied up my closet and kitchen basis Mary Kondo’s KonMari method and ended up making room for my new baby. I spent quality time with my grandparents. Even my eating habits changed such that dinner times became a quality time that my husband and I would spend talking together. My husband and I cooked a lot more together and had more home-cooked meals. I made time to write a baby journal.
Looking back at all these changes I realized how a simple unintentional act to save money had put me on the path to transform a lifelong bane of mine. So I created a framework around this to help me break old habits. I started using this to break my negligence towards exercise and meditation. The framework is really simple with just 3 parts to it
1. Identify one habit that you want to quit
Although this sounds straightforward, it may not always be apparent which habit you need to break. For example, I have tried for years to get some yoga and meditation into my schedule, I installed exercise goal trackers and guided meditation apps to nudge me in the direction, but nothing worked. I would sleep late and rush to work. I started reflecting on why I was not changing and I realized it was because of my night routine, not my morning routine. I read from my Kindle every night for a couple of hours and would sleep in late which affected my ability to wake up early.
Although nighttime reading was a great habit to build, it was interfering with my other goal of building a good morning exercise routine.
Also since I was reading from a screen that emits light and not a physical book I ended up staying awake for hours and not dozing off. This was the habit that I needed to break. I switched to Audible for nighttime reading and Kindle for my commute. This was easy since I already had a habit of reading multiple books at a time. I ended up dozing off in fifteen minutes and was up early for my exercise routine.
2. Create a blocker to go back to that habit
This is where it gets a little tricky.
This blocker that you create should be just right in terms of the effort needed to overcome it. You don’t want to feel frustrated about breaking your old habit.
In my case, I had to switch to a low sugar diet for my gestational diabetes. Saying no to sweets and desserts can be hard and frustrating, especially when you eat with others. The blocker I created was to feel full most of the time by having healthy snacks. These were not necessarily boring snacks, but things I thoroughly enjoyed like nuts and beans. Trying to avert my sugar cravings by anticipating them much earlier, created a feeling of fullness. Desserts during meal times with colleagues are much harder to create a blocker since it is readily available in front of you. So I ended up planning my lunch box only with stuff that I love to eat, like clarified butter, yogurt, and my favorite veggies. This gave me a feeling that my entire meal was a treat, and I didn’t have to wait for dessert. I was stricter on meals that I had better control of, like the ones I had at home, where I could simply keep dessert out of sight.
3. Have a way to celebrate and measure progress
This is the easiest and the most fun step of breaking a bad habit.
When you can see that your work has paid off, it reinforces your commitment and makes you feel good.
Just having a streak monitor and telling your friends what you did can be hugely rewarding. In my effort to meditate I finally put my apps to better use by tracking my meditation streak. In my effort to switch to a low sugar diet the blood work every two weeks kept reassuring me that I and the baby are going to do just fine.
Changing your life patterns can be hard, guilt about it only makes it worse. However, when you do make a baby step towards it you know that you tried. You know that your love for life has made you take matters on your hands and that is a victory in itself.
