Habits are like a double edged sword. Some habits are good and some are bad.
The key is to dull the bad side of the sword and sharpen the good side.
One challenge that I have seen is the more focused anything gets in life, the more it tends to become bigger in life.
This has served me very well when my goals are to grow a business, to sell more, to market better, to be more successful, etc. Because of my focus on this, I sell more; I am more successful, and grow the business more, etc.
The flip side of this is if there is a habit that I want to stop, and I start thinking about that, I tend to do more of the bad habit.
It has been said that you cannot change a habit; you can only replace it. I guess the key is to look at any potentially bad habit and simply look at replacing it with something that is more positive.
Part of this can be as simple as focusing on the good outcome - not the bad habit. I have never smoked but using smoking as an example, focus on breathing clean air and feeling good, not on stopping smoking.
I think there is a lot of merit to what you are saying. The other problem with focusing on the bad habits is that when you engage in whatever the bad habit is, you set yourself up to feelings of failure, which then loops around to more of the bad habit.
ReplyDeleteIf you can focus your attention on replacing whatever it is with something else, when you do lapse into behavior that supports the bad habit, you are more apt to let it go and return back to whatever you wish to replace it with. More repetitions of the same over time will eventually phase out the bad habit and create a new, positive one.
It still isn't easy and still requires awareness and commitment, but in my opinion it is more likely to bring success in the long run.