As you walk through life semi-consciously, the bad habits you accumulate will work against you.
In the same way that good habits compound upwards, bad habits will fuel a vicious, downward spiral. Wait 10 years without addressing your bad habits, and you’ll be much closer to hell than you’d expect. Even if your vices were small, the negative compounding will throw you way off track in the long run.
It doesn’t matter what these habits are - sugar, TV, junk food, porn, smoking, drinking - whatever. The bad vibes will accumulate, and eventually come back to bite you.
Authors like James Clear and Charles Duhigg will tell you how easy it is to build good habits by making tiny changes in your life. The idea behind good habits is that they take less thinking, less willpower, and ultimately, less consciousness. Good habits are meant to let you turn on autopilot and still get compounding benefits.
Good habits and bad habits are different beasts
But no one really gets to the crux of how to break bad habits. That’s because breaking bad habits is not the mirror image of making good habits. The tools you use to habitualize a good behaviour cannot simply be inverted to help you un-habitualize a bad behaviour - no matter what James Clear or Charles Duhigg say.
If instilling good habits is all about subconsciously programming yourself to engage in better behaviours, breaking a bad habit requires an increase in consciousness. As shameful, guilt-inducing, and terrifying as it is, you need to turn up the brightness to see the bad habit in your mind’s eye, with utmost clarity.
This is not fun to do.
Your ego is inclined to hide away your deficiencies and shortcomings. Its vices are like vampires - they seek shelter in the darkness, suck on your vitality, and hate the light. But that’s exactly where you need to get them - out in the open. That’s half the battle. Facing them head on, and seeing them for what they are, rather than the long shadows they cast, you can now understand what it will really take to break off these behaviours.
Start by watching yourself like a hawk
At the very beginning of your journey in increasing your consciousness around your habitual behaviours, you must watch yourself like a hawk. Literally. The only thing that worked for me was meticulously writing down every action I took and every thought I had - to the resolution of putting my socks away, or thinking about what my next meal was going to be. That’s what I was doing when I wasn’t here on Substack in February.
Watch your actions. Watch your thoughts. When you’re watching that closely, you’re forced to be present. You’re forced to face what’s right in front of you - including that wretched impulse to behave in a way which will leave you ashamed and guilty afterwards.
You’re forced to notice the illusive thoughts and negotiations your ego puts up to convince you to engage your impulse. In the light of your consciousness, you will be able to see in full brightness how your mind tries to fool you with imaginary stories, instead of engaging with reality.
Direct your intentions at the smallest resolution
If the first step is watching yourself like a hawk so that you can start to notice your impulses and actions, the next step is to start taking back control.
Now that you are here and awake, it’s time to turn off autopilot. Start setting the most humiliatingly small goals, and reach them. Put that glass back in the kitchen cupboard. Ok, now go fold that T-shirt. Ok, now write one sentence. Ok, now write the next. And so it goes on. Decompose your day into these micro-goals and micro-actions. Only then will you start to build the muscle of conscious intention, to battle against the actions driven by unconscious impulse.
Trust me, it’s the only thing that works. Direct yourself to do the absolutely smallest good thing that you can manage, in the face of the roaring impulse to seek short term pleasure instead. And then do the next vanishingly small thing.
Whilst doing all of this, you must remain conscious and aware of any impulses that arise. Let them sit with you whilst you continue your good work. Let them watch you from the sidelines as you take control. Like Russell Crowe’s imaginary friends in A Beautiful Mind, let them judge you as you ignore them and choose to act in reality instead.
Only in embracing this discomfort of inhibiting an automatic behaviour and choosing to do something different, will you emerge victorious. This is a battle of consciousness - not a battle of habits. Masking your bad habits by layering on more good habits might superficially work - but we’re in the business of fully acknowledging and dissolving our shortcomings - not sticking a load of bandaids on the cracks. Only with this, and with time, will those bad habits shrivel away, and make space for better things.
Let nobody fool you otherwise.
One Liners
“Never giving up on yourself often requires you to give up on many other worthy endeavours.” -
Recommended reading from Substack:
💭
encourages us to reject imagination and accept reality.🤔
shows us why we should stop overthinking so that we can finally get to work (and she’s just published her first book!).🪣
takes us through an exercise of compiling a reverse bucket list.🔁
explains the art of mindful repetition.👉
says pointless is the point.
Recommended reading beyond Substack:
The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (thanks
for recommending this - loved it)
I love the idea of your impulses watching you from the sidelines while you take control.. until they shrivel away. Such a powerful image.
I enjoyed reading this Zan—you did a great a job of distilling some big ideas here. I also love the way you spaced your paragraphs, making for a clear reading experience. Creative use of the editor and very well executed. Keep it coming, and thanks for the mention!