Our habits shape our personalities and lives. The good habits give us the ability to achieve our goals and succeed. On the other hand, bad habits often serve to impede our journey to achieving our goals and aspirations.
Habits are so difficult to change as they are triggered unconsciously when exposed to familiar situations. Habits are learnt when we repeat the same action under the same circumstances. After we internalise the habits, most of us do not even have to consciously think of what we are doing when performing them. This is the exact reason to why eliminating a bad habit takes a tremendous dose of willpower. Unlike habits, temptations are caused by visceral factors such as hunger, sex or thirst.
So how do we go about eliminating our bad habits? Research has shown that there are a few strategies that people use to control their habits.
1. Vigilant monitoring – Look out for situations that we may accidentally perform these bad habits and giving ourselves constant reminders not to do so.
2. Distraction – Try to think of something else.
3. Stimulus control – Removing ourselves from the situation where we will perform the habit, for instance, leaving the bar, fast-food restaurant etc.
For strong habits, vigilant monitoring is found to be the most useful strategy, followed by distractions. For strong temptations, stimulus control is found to be the most effective strategy followed by distraction. On the other hand, for weak habits and temptations, the strategy used does not matter that much, even though for weak temptations the monitoring strategy is found to be the best strategy.
So why does vigilant monitoring work for habits but not temptations? It may be because the constant watch out for slip-ups may increase our attention to these temptations, thus causing us to be more tempted by them. Stimulus control, on the other hand, removes the temptation out of sight and hence out of our mind as well. For our habits, vigilant monitoring works as it helps us to realise our habit and consciously remind ourselves that we have to change it.
Even so, all of us know how tiring it is to constantly reminding ourselves to break out of our bad habits and definitely, on some days, we may just give in to these habits. With that being said, it may be more useful for us to try and replace the old habit with a new one in the long run. However, this new habit is less likely to be more stable than our old habits. Even though habits are hard to change, it is necessary for us to try to eliminate our bad habits in order to live a more fulfilling life.
Category(s):Mental Health in Asia
Source material from Psyblog
