Last week Janine and Shannon talked about creating helpful habits. This week, we look at the other side of the coin–letting go of bad habits. Shannon shares her view that all habits (even bad ones) are the result of good intentions and talks about how we can use that information to kick bad habits.
Discussion topics include:
- The inherent value of bad habits
- Peeling back the many layers of a bad habit to find the need it fulfills
- Figuring out how to fulfill the positive intention in a more beneficial way
- Being kind to yourself as you work on letting go of bad habits
- Creating a helpful habit that is incompatible with the bad habit
- The double-edged sword of habits becoming so automatic
- Becoming conscious of your unwanted habits and breaking their spell
- Shannon’s three-step process to letting go of a bad habit
- Remembering that your bad habits don’t define you
Links:
- An excerpt from James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits: How to Automate a Habit and Never Think About it Again
I have been instilling good habits with my routines, but I do have some bad habits I want to break. You have given me some good ideas.
I had to laugh when I read the beginning of the article about the NRC man being ripped off by his employees. A long time ago I worked for Marriott Hotels as a night auditor. We balanced the books each night for all the cash-generating venues: front desk, catering, restaurant, bar, gift shop, etc. One of our tasks was loss prevention; we sat around late at night after we had finished our specific work and tried to think of ways to rip off the company so that we could put systems in place to prevent that. Our philosophy was that we wanted to remove temptation so that honest people would be able to remain honest because thieves are going to try to steal anyway. Years later I was being interviewed for a job (I don’t remember which one) and I had to take a psychological test. One of the questions was, “Have you ever thought about stealing from your employer?” I answered yes and tried to explain about the old job. Needless to say, I flunked the test and didn’t get the job!