Habits become hard to break because they are deeply wired in our brains by our beliefs system and constant repetition, and when you add pleasure when acquiring an item or stress when discarding an item, the pleasure and emotional centres of the brain get fired up as well, so what really drives us to change our habits, so the new habit becomes automatic.
Habits are patterns of behaviour, and it is the breaking of these patterns that is the key to breaking the habits themselves. Usually there is a clear trigger to start the pattern, sometimes the triggers are emotional, other times the trigger is more situational and environmental, more often it is a combination of both, the mix of social anxiety and the partly environment.
When your habits become a routine behaviour, they keep us from having to reinvent the wheel of our daily lives by making an infinite number of decisions all day long, which in turn provides us with more brain-space to think about other things, the downside of these routine patterns comes when those patterns land more in the bad column than the good one.
It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements daily. Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about.
Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable, sometimes it isn’t even noticeable, but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding.
But when we repeat 1 percent errors, day after day, by replicating poor decisions, duplicating tiny mistakes, and rationalising little excuses, our small choices compound into toxic results. It’s the accumulation of many missteps a 1 percent decline here and there that eventually leads to a problem.
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.
This can be a difficult concept to appreciate in daily life. We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter very much in the moment. We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly and so we slide back into our previous routines.
Similarly, a slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination. Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits not once in a lifetime transformation.
That said, it doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.
Identify the triggers.
By identifying your triggers, you have a way of pushing back and not having that autopilot kick in.
But some people have a difficult time doing this. If this is true for you, that you have a difficult time knowing what emotionally triggers you, you can work backwards, notice, for example, when you have made a decision to donate any items or throwing away an item in your home, and slow down and use your awareness of these behaviours as signals to ask yourself: What is going on emotionally or what actions did you take to that point to make that decision?
Deal with the triggers
Because we’re wanting to break patterns, you now want to do something about the triggers themselves.
Develop a substitute plan
Breaking habits isn’t about stopping but substituting. The key here is mapping this out before that triggers have a chance to kick in.
Change the larger pattern
Here we are widening the context that surrounds the habit pattern. By looking at and changing the larger pattern you are actually not only making it easier to tackle the core habit, but are practicing exercising your willpower on smaller, easier pattern breaking behaviours. This can add to your sense of empowerment.
Use prompts
These are reminders to help you break the pattern by creating positive triggers and alerts to keep you on track. or checking in with yourself and gauging your stress level on the way home before it gets too high and out of your control.
Get supports
Get a friend, or someone you can call, or an online forum or peer support group you can tap into when those relapses start to kick in and you are struggling.
Keep asking yourself challenging questions like, when was the last time I needed it? when was the last time I used it? how likely is it that I will use it in the future? what is my track record of using items like this? what is the impact of keeping the things in relation to my problem?
Support and reward yourself
At some point in your efforts to break a habit, you reach a point where you go: Why am I bothering to struggle with this? You feel discouraged, you feel you are emotionally making your life seemingly harder and that there is little payoff.
This is normal, the low point in the process, and you need to keep your eyes on the prize. But you also need to make sure you build in a payoff. Here you deliberately pat yourself on the back for having dinner at the table rather than the couch, even though you won’t immediately feel better.
Again, you sink into having people around you to cheer you on and help you realise that you are making progress and are on the right path. Be more self-compassionate and less self-critical about yourself.
Be persistent and patient
Be persistent and consistent realising that it will take time for the new brain connections to kick in, for the old brain firings to calm down, for new patterns to replace the old. Don’t beat yourself up for slip ups or use them as rationales for quitting. Take it one day at the time remember “neurons that fire together wire together.”
Consider getting professional help
If you’ve done the best, you can and you are still struggling, consider seeking professional support. This may be a GP who can prescribe medication for the underlying anxiety and depression, a therapist who cannot only help you unravel the sources and drivers of your habits, but also provide some steady support and accountability, or a Peer Support group that will connect you to a community that can relate to your challenges.
While all habits are not created equally, the overarching goal is the same, namely you are taking more charge of your life, being proactive rather than reactive, deliberate rather than routinised.
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