Kensray.com

Just like trying to create a new habit, trying to break a bad habit can also be simplified into a few but very important steps. I’ve used these to break bad habits with great success as well.

1. Pick a habit that you want to break. In the beginning pick a simple habit.

2. Find out why you want to break that habit. Watch videos about the dangers of it, read blogs, talk to people who’ve broken that habit, and for extremely quick results, meet people who were hospitalized because of that habit, i.e. smoking.

3. Find out your trigger that causes you to act on that habit. E.g. whenever you’re in the presence of people who’re smoking, you have an urge to smoke. So, the trigger would be you being around smokers. Whenever you feel sad you start to eat, so the trigger would be your getting sad. As soon as you sit on your couch, you turn the tv on, so the trigger would be you sitting on the couch.

4. Keep your motivation up by exposing yourself to the dangers of this habit by either reading something, watching some videos, or hanging around people who are breaking the same habit or have already broken the same habit, every single day.

5. Whenever you hit a trigger that normally causes you to act on the habit you’re trying to break, do something different right away before you can act out of habit. As soon as you sit on your couch, whip out a book and start reading it, or just stop hanging around smokers, or whenever you get sad, right away start writing in a journal.

Trick is to have a strong enough reason to break that habit. Then monitoring your triggers. As soon as you hit your trigger and want to act on your old habit, immediately put a break there. Break that pattern! If you do that enough times, trigger will get weaker. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Don’t forget that by actually trying various ways you’ll learn much more than just reading about them. Just don’t give up!

Over the years I have done many experiments trying find the best way to create new and positive habits and stop bad habits. I have done numerous 30 day experiments and every single one was successfully completed. Some of the habits I kept for up to 2 years. But almost every single one of those habits eventually died down. I went back to my old habits. I just could not understand why that was so.

There has been so much talk about it taking 21 days to establish a new habit! Almost every self help book you read you’ll find something along the same timeline. How it takes 21 days to form a new habit! Unfortunately that never worked for me. And I don’t mean that I tried one habit. I tried to form new habits in many different areas of my life but even doing them for up to 2 years did not work for me, forget about 21 days!

What went wrong? Obviously 21 days worked for some people!

Maybe it was because I was forcing myself to complete my 30 day goals? I did not look at those goals or habits as long term goals. Instead I was determined to complete them for 30 days for the sake of completing them. My goal was to complete those tasks for 30, 60 or pre-determined number of days.

So, for example, my goal was to work out for every single day for 30 days. Instead my goal should have been to look a certain way, or to have more stamina and so on.

My goal was to give up sugar for 30 days instead it should’ve been to have a healthy diet.

Now I’m looking at habits a bit differently. I decide what my ultimate goal is, then I break it down into smaller and more manageable daily tasks.

E.g. one of my goals is to have more stamina. Now this is not a 30 day goal. I want to have more stamina for the rest of my life. I want that to be my lifestyle. So, I’m in no hurry in trying to achieve that. There’s no 30 day goal here. I start with ridiculously small goals for every single day.

One thing you must remember whenever trying to set a new habit is to perform it every single day.

For the first week I only put on my jogging clothes, wear my running shoes and go out the door. Then immediately I come back in. I do this for one week.

For week two, I walked for 5 mins only.

For week three, I walked for 10 mins only and so on…

Best idea is to choose habits for life instead of for short term. If you think about habits in that sense you would realize that there is no rush. Go at a slow pace. Stretch yourself only enough that you don’t mind and you don’t get any resistance from your mind.

So, the first week do something very small. Each week, increase the intensity a little bit. This way before you know it, you would have developed a new habit.

For instance, if you wanted to develop the habit of writing a post for your blog daily.

Week 1. Pick up your computer and log onto your blog and then log off

Week 2. Start writing with a timer and write for only 5 mins, save it as a draft, which you may publish by the end of the week

Week 3. Write for 10 mins daily

Week 4. Write for 15 mins daily

Week 5. Write for 20 mins daily and keep increasing slowly but consistently

Another thing that was missing in all of my 21/60/90 day experiments was the motivation! I had incredible motivation at the beginning but eventually motivation died down and I still kept up my habit because of self discipline.

What if I had tried the following?

Whatever goal I wanted to achieve, I should’ve found sources of motivation for me. That could be watching videos, reading books, reading blog posts, listening to audio tapes regarding that goal, talking to people about it, joining groups about it (offline and online) and so on. Meaning  I should have kept my motivation high.

So, I think habits also die down after a while because we feel pointless in continuing with them. We tend to forget why we really started forming that particular habit. That’s why it’s very important to have a “WHY”. We should be reminding ourselves why we are trying to set a habit, why we’re trying to achieve a particular goal.

E.g. we learn about dangers of sugar. Now we set a goal to cut sugar from our diet. As days go by we tend to slowly forget why we were cutting sugar out of our diets. We have an idea that it’s bad for us but that real intense fear is gone. That motivation is gone! We need to spark that fire again. Otherwise, temptations come in the way! We’re surrounded by wonderful tasting foods that have sugar in them! Not to mention people eating items containing sugar all around us, and let’s not forget the advertising that bombards us on a daily basis!

So, we could start watching videos of dangers of sugar or dangers of high fructose corn syrup. And also, keep yourself busy with reading research documents, visiting blogs about their dangers and so on. Spend some time daily on doing this along with setting small daily tasks of eliminating sugar from our diet. Then see what happens!

Pretty soon you will realize that your mindset has shifted. You will automatically become conditioned to think that sugar is bad for you. And I think that’s the best form of motivation there is. Once you develop a belief then you will not have to force yourself, or discipline yourself to do anything. You will stop having foods that contain sugar or HFCS automatically. You will not even feel like having them

So, the biggest thing I’ve learned from my years of experimenting with trying to set new habits or eliminate bad ones is that we need to keep burning the fire of motivation, we need to keep reminding ourselves why we’re continuing with our 21/30/60 day experiments!

Right now, one of the habits that I’m working on is writing for my blog for 5 minutes daily! Instead of writing and posting, I just write for 5 minutes in google documents then when I feel it’s enough for a post, I just publish it on my blog.

So, do not be surprised if the quality goes down a little bit. I’m trying to write a half decent blog but more importantly setting a habit of writing every single day!

That’s where I find we go wrong! We try to achieve too much too fast! If we do not develop a habit of doing something on a consistent basis, what happens when we’re really feeling down, or tired, or just are not motivated anymore, or something else of importance comes to our life? We take a break! After all it’s just one day!

But before the habit is ingrained in your subconscious mind, no breaks should be taken! None! Even if you spend 2 minutes on your habit, do it! But do not skip a day without performing a task towards your goal!

And make sure you keep your motivation high for the first few weeks especially! 30 day experiments are fine if you consistently keep reminding yourself why you’re involved in this experiment in the first place!

Motivation is an essential ingredient of success. Most of the time when we fail to achieve our goals is because our motivation fire burns out. The challenge is always trying to stay motivated until our goals are achieved. I have found one way to stay motivated is to continuously read motivational quotes.

Now how does that apply to gossiping? As you go through your day and meet the people you regularly meet there is a chance you may slip back into your old behavior of gossiping. Everyone knows you by who you were before you started off on this no gossiping pilgrimage. If you were a gossiper, then people expect certain responses and stories from you. When all of a sudden you stop that they are bound to suspect something. You can play it cool and just seem interested in all the gossip without really contributing and I can tell you that this works quite well.

There will be times that you will get very frustrated with someone. Maybe someone’s taken credit for the work you’ve done, or you’ve just found out that someone has been bad mouthing you behind your back, or you just feel like gossiping. At times like these you have to remember your goals! It’s times like these that divide boys from men. This is where you should muster enough will power to get your back on track.

I have collected a list of quotations about gossiping which I found to be very helpful in reminding me of my goals and why I stopped gossiping in the first place. Here they are. Hope you enjoy them and can find them motivating you to stop gossiping as well.

“When of a gossiping circle it was asked, What are they doing? The answer was , Swapping lies.” – Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“What you don’t see with your eyes, don’t witness with your mouth.” – Jewish Proverb

“Live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” – Will Rogers

“What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away.” – Chinese Proverb

“Who gossips with you will gossip of you.” – Irish saying

“If it’s very painful for you to criticize your friends – you’re safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that’s the time to hold your tongue.” – Alice Duer Miller

“He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still the deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.” – Mark Twain

“When you are in trouble, people who call to sympathize are really looking for the particulars.” – Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911

“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.” – Bertrand Russell

“ The easiest way to keep a secret is without help.” – Unknown Author

“Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.” – Frank A. Clark

“The easiest way to keep a secret is without help.” – Unknown Author

“It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and the narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things.” – Lawrence G. Lovasik

“It is one of my sources of happiness never to desire a knowledge of other people’s business.” – Dolley Madison

“Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.” – Richard Steele, Sr.

“To find out a girl’s faults, praise her to her girlfriends.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.” – Erica Jong

“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” – Errol Flynn

“Journalism is organized gossip.” – Edward Eggleston

“Who brings a tale takes two away.” – Irish Proverb

“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.” – Lisa Kirk

“ The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.” – Napoleon I, Maxims

“Gossip, n.: Hearing something you like about someone you don’t.” – Earl Wilson

“The biggest liar in the world is They Say.” – Douglas Malloch

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” – Benjamin Franklin

To say that the past seven days have been an eye opener would be an under statement. I really enjoyed going without gossiping. In my previous posts I mentioned that it was becoming easier to stay without gossiping. In the past few days I’ve noticed the opposite.

Up until day 4 of this challenge I was feeling very good through out the day and felt annoyed if someone wanted to get me involved in any kind of gossip. On days 5, 6 and 7 I felt inclined to gossip. It was like this strong force urging me to go ahead and gossip. It’s like an addiction! If you are trying to give up chocolate for instance, sometimes all you want is a little piece, that’s all!

I think it might be due to getting frustrated with work and certain people. Also, gossip around me was going overwhelming and it would have taken me back into the vicious circle if I hadn’t relied heavily on my will power. It took a lot of discipline to stay on course but I really enjoyed it. Like trying to give up smoking and still going out for smoke breaks with your smoke buddies. It makes it just a little bit more challenging.

Overall I think this habit is a keeper. I am going to go ahead and adopt this habit. It feels wonderful to live without criticizing and bad mouthing people. Even before I wasn’t that bad but still this is the better me.

Another side benefit of this challenge is that I have started to treat people differently. If someone on another team makes a mistake, instead of criticizing and complaining, now I understand that they’re humans after all and mistakes happen. Then I just move on. No whining, no complaining, no gossiping!

I used to wonder about people who achieved great success. I wanted to know exactly how they thought, what they felt and how they would approach goals differently than average people.

Once I was listening to Mike Ferry, real estate trainer, and he said that there were three things in life that if you could do those, you could do anything. That was a really exciting time for me since now I was going to find out the real secret and yardstick by which I could measure myself. Following were the three things according to him:

1) keep your house clean

2) manage your health

3) manage your finances

I have to say that I was a little disappointed. I expected something out of this world. I was ready with the right emotions and expressions, ready to stand up in awe and applaud but I was a little under whelmed by his statement.

He went onto challenge people to try it out. All I have to say is that I am still trying it out. It just seems easy at first glance but every single one of these is very challenging. Take for instance the discipline required to keep your house clean. There is just so much involved even in keeping the house clean day by day, every single day. If you break down the topic of health and finances you can realize how difficult this really is.

But since time is passing anyways, may as well get started. Slowly but surely we can achieve success in these areas. One small step at a time. With each small step successfully accomplished we will definitely be better off than we are now.

If we do not choose our goals, life will choose them for us. And it is a very exciting journey.

Like Earl Nightingale used to say “Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”