Please take a few minutes to list a few bad habits you want to get rid of and good habits you expect to form.
Replace, not erase
Use habits to overcome habits.
"One habit overcomes another."
Thomas? Kamps, author of Imitating Christ.
After we have made clear the good habits we want to develop and the bad habits we want to get rid of, it is very important to fully understand how to change habits. People usually say that habits are hard to eradicate. In fact, this statement is not accurate Habit can't be eradicated, it can only be replaced. In other words, you can only replace a bad habit, but not erase it. Replace, not erase, the difference between the two is very important! Therefore, before we start to get rid of bad habits, we must think clearly about which good habits we should choose instead.
You may have heard that some addicts turn to overeating after quitting smoking. The result is overeating and sudden weight gain. Although the reason why smokers often overeat after quitting smoking is not clear, it is obvious that after breaking a habit, there are bound to be some gaps that must be filled. Therefore, it is very important to choose good habits to replace bad habits. In this way, we can avoid a bad habit just leaving and another bad habit coming one after another.
The power of wheel marks
A recent fishing trip in Canada once again reminded me of the importance of choosing habits. It is said that the good fishing season in Canada is twice a year, that is, the whole winter and July. In summer, the snow in this remote area begins to melt, and the roads become very muddy, so cars will leave deep traces after driving. When winter comes, the road surface is completely frozen, and the firmly frozen wheel marks on the road surface have become a great challenge for drivers. Every winter, there is always a sign at the entrance of this remote undeveloped area, which reads: "Drivers, please choose the track you want to exercise carefully. It should be noted that you will drive 20 kilometers within the track you choose! "
Aren't habits like wheel tracks on the road? They determine the direction of your life, whether you are heading for success or failure. Once you choose them, you will be trapped in them for a long time. Therefore, you must carefully choose the habits that determine your life.
If you choose good habits to replace bad habits, it will be much easier to get rid of bad habits. Take chewing tobacco as an example. I have a friend who used a simple method of cracking melon seeds instead of chewing tobacco. Every time he was tempted to chew tobacco, he forced himself to eat some melon seeds. Although he quit smoking now and doesn't need to eat melon seeds, he needed melon seeds for a long time at the beginning of quitting smoking.
Another friend of mine has a bad habit of lying in bed and watching TV at night. In order to get rid of this bad habit, he felt sleepy and decided to read books instead of watching TV until he fell asleep. This undoubtedly proves once again that choosing new habits to replace old ones will greatly improve the possibility of getting rid of bad habits.
On the contrary, cultivating and constructing a good habit purposefully will help us realize that we are actually replacing other habits at the same time. For example, if you want to make your bed after getting up every morning, you must realize that the first thing you do after getting up every day is something else. For another example, if you want to get into the habit of actively listening, then you must have realized that you didn't have the habit of actively listening to others in the past. Poor listening may mean that your mind is always occupied by the next sentence you want to say, and you can't think about what others are saying. In this way, you are bound to miss a lot of information that others try to communicate with you, because you have been thinking about how you should answer. The reason why you are not good at active listening may also be that when you are talking to others, you always habitually turn your mind to other things that you must complete.
Accurately identify the habits we need to replace, and we can begin to implement them with more confidence. This is crucial. You know, if you don't know what your bad habit is, how can you get rid of it? Once the bad habits are defined, the possibility of replacing them with good habits will greatly increase.
Please take a few minutes to list a few bad habits that you want to replace and good habits that you want to replace (the more detailed, the better).