Rid Yourself of Bad Habits

The point is this: If you think you will have to spend the rest of your life fighting the urge to go back to your old habit, you probably will. Not because you can’t be free of the problem, but because the way you view the problem forces you to stay focused on your old behavior.

By refocusing on the benefits of your new lifestyle, you replace negative thoughts with positive ones. I agree with the basic premise of AA: Eliminating the old problem requires a long, hard struggle. The point is that you don’t have to eliminate it. It’s much easier to replace it with something better.

Freedom from bad habits comes when you replace the old behavior with a new lifestyle. I have always wondered why AA doesn’t focus less on controlling its members’ urge to drink and more on helping them build a new lifestyle that emphasizes the importance of exercise.

AA is right about one thing: Overconfidence is a danger in stage 5. Telling yourself that you can handle one drink, or one cigarette, or one piece of chocolate cake is one of the major causes of relapses. So how do you know when the war is over?

The difference between stage 5 and stage 6 is a difference between still changing and already changed. People in stage 5 are struggling to make and maintain changes in their life. The struggle can go on for years, or forever. People in stage 6 have successfully changed their lifestyle. How do you know when you’re really free of a bad habit, forever? Look for these three signs.

When you find all three in the new you, you can be sure that you’ve broken the old habit forever:

1. You have a new self-image. Successful self-changers talk about “owning the change.” When they reach stage 6, they feel that they’ve “made the change theirs.” In other words, they now see themselves as the new person that is living the new lifestyle. One day I stopped thinking of myself as an “ex-smoker.” It may seem like a superficial difference, but it isn’t. Once I started thinking of myself as a nonsmoker instead of an ex-smoker, I knew that there had been a deep and lasting change in my self-image. At that moment I knew the problem would never return.