Making it Painful

 

The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behaviour.

James Clear, page 206

I suppose there are so many habits that are not necessarily wholesome in my life that I could change or break.  My procrastination habit being one of them. My messiness habit another.  My avoidance of the submission process is a fairly big one that gets in the way of me  getting published. There is my evening  Netflix binging and sweet consumption  to consider, or my tendency to go to bed too close to midnight. Many people will tell me I spend way too much time on the computer in the morning and see that as a habit that should be modified.  Hmmm!  There are a lot of habits I am repsonsible for that may be standing in the way of me living a healthier and freer life. So why am I not so concerned about breaking them? Should I be? 

If I were inclined to break these habits and if it got so far as me writing down on a piece of paper: " I will break the habit of eating sweets at night", for example, I would break this habit.  I am notorious for doing what I set out to do...but the thing is...I do not care if these habits get broken or not. Hmm!

James Clear, in Atomic Habits, outlines that habits can be broken by  ensuring that they are the opposite of the habits we may want to build. We have to make the habits we want to break invisible, unattractive, difficult or even painful, and unsatisfactory. Hmm. 

Make it invisible?

Yeah, no sweets in the house. If there were no sweets visibly in front of me I could not binge on them.  Sigh.

Make it unattractive?

Does that mean I have to buy sweets that taste like crap? No, not necessarily.  But that would work like Antabuse works for the alcoholic...making me sick on sweets. Or maybe I just have to see how I am gaining weight...those rolls in my belly are not so attractive and either are the fillings in my mouth. Hmm! The prospect of health related issues from a high sugar consumption...not attractive  and neither are the hypoglycemic crashes that follow a chocolate binge. 

Make it difficult? 

If an alcoholic had to drive five miles to the store to get alcohol every time they had a craving...keeping alcohol out of the house would make it difficult for them to drink, wouldn't it? Thus curbing the habit, at least a bit. If I had no chocolate bars in the house...I probably wouldn't drive to the store at 8 O'clock at night to get some, would I? Going to the kitchen to whip up a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins may not be a difficulty I'd not be willing to put myself through either. ( Heck...who am I kidding?  I have seen me whipping up a batch of something at Nine O'clock at night to curb my craving. Besides, if I had chocolate chips in the house I'd be eating them from the bag. lol)

Make It Unsatisfying?

Man, why does chocolate have to be so satisfying? Some would say, "Well choose the dark stuff, the stuff with a high cacoa concentration.The taste is a little bitter and less satisfying"...but I just eat twice as much of that because I convince myself it is good for me lol

So I guess my habits are not creating enough obvious pain in my life right now or otherwise I would be stopping them.  The key phrase is right now....  What is the long term effect of these less than wholesome habits? Hmm.  If I continue binging on Netflix and eating sweets I am going to keep gaining weight which will have a negative effect on my physical and mental health. I am depriving my mind and body of other things that could nourish it...maybe I am setting myself up for contamination and degeneration of the mind and body?  If I keep procrastinating finishing writing projects and sending them off I may never get published again.  And maybe, just maybe, the world needs what I have to offer in some tiny form and I am depriving those needy beings  of it? What pain does my procrastination cost the world?  (Okay...that is a stretch lol)

A Habit Contract

Regardless, Clear offers a pretty feasible solution to assisting us with breaking "bad" habits.  He calls it a Habit Contract. A Habit contract is a written  declaration of what you intend to do and the consequence for not following through. For example, I might write, "I will refrain from eating high calory sweets at night. If I eat a chocolate bar, I will need to take a quick jaunt around the block regardless of time or  weather."  I can see that being a healthy consequence, can you? 

That would work for me. Once I write a declaration on paper, I usually stick with it.  Hmm! 

So, are these habits I have listed here in need of a habit contract? Am I at the point where I consider them worth the effort of changing?  I don't know yet but I will get back to you when I have an answer. (I am a procrastinator, remember.) 

All is well. 

James Clear (2018) Atomic Habits. New York: Avery