Habits - Follow-up Article

HABITS FOLLOW-UP ARTICLE

Why am I writing on Habits again? Just to be ironic? No; if you’ll remember from the March meeting speech, the basics of habit mastery are STOP - ERASE - REPLACE. You simply keep stopping the bad habit until the replaced behavior becomes habit. So this follow-up article is my way of reinforcing good habits – a way of reminding you of the simple tools that lead to powerful habits, instead of destructive ones.

STOP: whether it’s a thought in your head ("I’ll put that aside and have time for it tomorrow"), or a behavior (stress-eating, nail-biting, or smoking) kick it out of your life. It’s your head – you get to decide what’s in it and what’s not. And they’re your hands – a ghost didn’t possess your body and make you eat 26 Oreos. Use the 1960’s technique of Thought Stopping, and when you catch yourself engaging in funky mental gymnastics or old, unwanted actions, just say no. Literally. In the 60’s, therapists taught people to scream out loud, "STOP!" Well, we’ve all mellowed a little since then, so just say it to yourself. Stop! As many times as you find yourself thinking or doing any unwanted behavior. Like a stubborn child, your head and hands will take a little while to learn who’s boss, so keep at it. It takes about 21 days to lose a bad habit, or create a good one.

ERASE: use any visual you want – see the unwanted thought on a blackboard and erase it with a comically huge eraser. See yourself smoking on a tiny TV screen, in black and white with wave lines if you want, and then turn off the set. Actively erasing the image of old behavior helps speed up the new reality. You’ve heard to visualize your goals or else you won’t reach them, right? Same technique. In your head you can blow up that pack of cigarettes, strangle that Big Mac, or see yourself shredding your credit cards.

REPLACE: here’s the fun part. You get to do what you really want. We all have our ideal selves, and now you get to be closer to that ideal. So stop the old, erase it away mentally or actually, and then replace the thought or action with the good habit.

So, if you want to eat better the progression looks like this: the thought to eat that last donut at work pops into your head (of course! It’s the last one! And you’ve been good all morning, and you deserve it because you did such a great job on that report, and you’ll go exercise right after work, etc.). Yell at yourself: STOP! See yourself with giant, greasy donuts graphed onto each thigh. Put yourself in a bikini to make it better, and then see someone squeezing out the grease from the donuts. As it fills the room, your image disappears into the pool of liquid fat.

Then see yourself at your ideal weight and size, without that post-sugar and fat slump you’d have gotten eating the donut. You have tons of energy, because you’re eating the fuel your body was designed for – fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and protein for energy. You enjoy your figure, and how your clothes fit. All this takes under 5 seconds. Twenty-one days of yelling at yourself, seeing the old image drowning in fat, and inserting the new image of you, and you’ll eat healthier.

The catch: you can only do one habit at a time. So you may have to continue eating donuts while you quit smoking or procrastinating. I know, you’re really broken up.

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