Doddsism #115

Replace a bad habit with a good one. Perform an habit exchange!

It seems like good habits are hard to form, while bad habits are hard to break. Habits can be very powerful. You can get into a routine of doing something that eventually performing this task becomes like breathing, you do it without thinking about it. Unfortunately for most of us we have gotten into some bad habits that we want to fix but have been doing it for so long that it is hard to stop. Procrastination is a good example of this. We procrastinate so much that even when we want to stop it becomes difficult to. I heard somewhere that after you do something four times consistently, it starts to become habitual. The more you continue to repeat this pattern the stronger the habit can become. If we can replace the bad habit with a good one then not only have you eliminated a bad habit but you have also started a good one.

I watched a Mary J. Blige interview one day where she talked about spending a thousand dollars a week on flowers. When the interviewers asked her why, she replied that she used to spend that money on drugs and when she decided to quit she chose to use that money on flowers instead. The first thing in breaking a bad habit is  first wanting to quit. You have to truly want to quit or it will make it that much harder to do so. If you truly want to quit then find something you can replace that routine with. For Mary J. Blige it was buying flowers with the money she would have gotten drugs with. Reallocate that time and energy to doing and obtaining something positive. Having a substitute will make it easier to quit while adding a little more positivity to your life. You can do it, never give up!

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