10/03/19

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle

In my last post, I talked about building a new life, brick by brick, during a difficult time of forced change. Part of ‘feeling the fear, and doing it anyway’ was putting in place new habits and routines, ones that built a complete and rounded life, not just because of the changes but to support those changes, forced and not.

I started new hobbies and habits during this time, some of which were good habits, some bad, and some of the ugly ones (crying…ugly crying, a lot!) were ones I knew I needed (and wanted) to stop. As I focused on seeing the positives from the good habits, over time I did less of the bad and ugly ones, and began to figure out some routines that gave me structure and consistency whilst I was dealing with those big changes: being on my own, moving house, finding a new job.

Living on my own for the first time gave me both control of my space (if you make a mess, it’s your mess to live with, and your mess to clean up… no one else to blame or moan at!) and of my decisions (no one else to answer to or compromise for) but also it made me recognise the way I make or break habits. If you have ever read Gretchen Rubin’s ‘The Four Tendencies‘ I’ve since identified I’m most definitely an Obliger. I’m more likely to do something if I’m accountable to or doing it for someone else. But if I reach a breaking point, I become a Rebel. In other words, I don’t exactly commit to something purely for my own benefit, I do it either for someone else or as a rebellion against something or someone else, to regain control.

Identifying your bad habits

I can recall two particular ‘bad’ habits that I stopped when I was much younger, as a form of rebellion. The first was having sugar in my tea: my dad took sugar in his tea but my mum didn’t. And I was a daddy’s girl, so of course, I had sugar in mine. Then when I was about 16 years old my parents split up, and I fell out with my dad, so one day, in rebellion, I simply decided – I don’t have sugar in my tea anymore; I went ‘cold turkey’. I still remember how ghastly that first sugarless tea tasted, but I persisted (I have a stubborn streak too, so I can be determined when I want to be), and to this day I have only ever had sugar in my tea by accident, and even then I tend to end up not drinking it, as I don’t like how it tastes!

The second of my ‘bad’ habits was biting my nails. I remember back to when I started piano lessons, and my piano teacher, who no doubt would rather watch beautiful fingers move gracefully across the keys, offered to give me a manicure set if I stopped biting them. As a nine-year-old, I had no idea what a manicure set was so this offer was lost on me, and I continued to bite them. It was not until I was in my first year at university, I had a boyfriend who was particularly frustrated by it, so much so he would pull my hands out of my mouth when I did it. He tried to control me in a number of ways, and in hindsight thankfully the relationship was short-lived, but once it ended I simply stopped biting my nails. This was another occasion when the rebel in me stopped a bad habit.

How habits are formed, and how to break a bad habit

Every habit — good or bad — follows the same 3–step pattern: Reminder (the trigger that initiates the behaviour), routine (the behaviour itself; the action you take), and reward (the benefit you gain from doing the behaviour). In these examples, I was motivated by my rebellion to stop doing what I always used to do, so whenever I triggered the reward I knew I was getting was taking back control of situations that I was not able to control. In reality that is what changing habits is all about – taking control of your actions.

Replace one habit with another

So that period of change back in 2012, the worst habit I had then was watching too much mindless TV. Ok, so you are thinking – is this the worst you have got? Sugar in your tea, biting your nails, and watching TV?! – well it’s all relative, and for me, watching TV was my way of dealing with stress, but it was adding no value to my life. And it was an easy option. Research shows, that we take the path of least resistance when forming habits – and when we want to stop a bad one we need to remove the triggers (make it harder) and replace it with something. So for me, I swapped watching TV for going swimming – instead of heading home after work and flopping in front of the TV, I made sure my sports bag was packed and loaded in the car in the morning, and I drove straight from the train station to the pool and went for a swim. At first, it wasn’t easy, but again it was a form of rebellion. My ex had particularly asked to take the TV with him when he moved out, so actually thinking about watching it motivated me to rebel against what he wanted, to take back control and build a new routine.

Accountability – find a support buddy!

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m an Obliger, so I’m more likely to do something if I make a commitment to someone else, than I am to do it simply for myself. Identifying your motivation in forming a new habit is vital, but also having an action plan to succeed is crucial. For me, swimming was something I did solo, but I found that telling my mum I was going was my way of being held accountable, as I knew she would ask me about it and I didn’t want to disappoint her. Before too long the habit was something I could see the physical benefits of as well, and I started to enjoy it, and my old habit of watching TV no longer had the same attraction as I had another more positive way to relieve my stresses.

So what bad habit do you want to stop today? And what’s your reason?

Knowing your why is crucial to figuring out how to change a habit, and to doing so successfully. You are never truly going to be motivated to change a bad habit until you find a reason, and that reason has to be right for you. And if you are wondering when to do it, no better time than now.

Recommended Further Reading:

I’ve read and would recommend a number of books about habits, and how and why we form them. I plan to write some further blog posts about each of them, as they have each played a part in how I have built my routines and habits to give me a full and rounded life. These include