Bad Habits: Know Your Enemy

April 1st, 2009

When it comes to conquering bad habits, imagine yourself in an epic war battle. You’re located in a dynamic, varied landscape and up against an enemy equipped with many different weapons. A simple “just quit it” tactic is like fighting a sophisticated army solely with bayonets. To paraphrase The Art of War, “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win.” This article is about better understanding ourselves and the basal reasons for our bad habits, so that they can be confidently overcome.

The sources of our bad habits are varied and indefinite. Here are some of the commonly observed reasons they start, and reasons they stick:

• Bad habits satisfy a vital need: Bad habits are not, in fact, all bad. They exist for a purpose. Realistically examining their value allows us to understand their existence. The habit could bring anxiety relief by releasing endorphins or triggering lethargy; it could act as a form of communication by signaling your mental state to others; it could simply help take your mind off stressful tasks by giving you something else to do. Whatever the case may be, to blindly remove the bad habit, without some form of compensation is a flawed proposition.
• People consider their bad habits inconsequential: As much as we may consciously like to stop a bad habit, the longer we perform it, the more we’re prone to considering it a sustainable, non-damaging practice. In some cases this is truer than others:
  

  Credit: Stefan-Xp

  • High-risk habits (smoking, drug use, alcoholism, overeating, etc.): The continuance of these habits is often defended by citing cases where people lived long lives, despite their addictions. Of course, high-risk habits have undeniably damaging health effects, even if some particularly thick-skinned individuals managed to survive them. Ignoring the reality of this fact is hard to do without a hefty dose of delusion. Some rational people, however, manage to suppress their health concerns because of the other reasons listed here.
  • Low and mid-risk habits (nail biting, hair pulling, skin picking, etc.): In these lower risk habits, the argument for habit triviality is stronger. These habits don’t drastically affect others and there isn’t a stream of public service announcements discouraging their activity. The impetus to stop has to come from within. In some situations, these habits annoy others (usually parents or spouses), who endeavour to overexaggerate the dangers. In these situations you may be inspired to continue the habit as an act of defiance, which leads to the next reason…
• Social motivators come into play: A sense of rebelliousness may cause you to cling to a habit. When nagged by others to stop, our innate desire to defend our character and choices kicks in. In a certain way you have to admit you were wrong before giving up a habit. For most of us, that’s a difficult thing to do. You may consider the habit as part of your self image, part of what makes you, you. Giving that up in a way says to others, “I’ve changed, flip-flopped on a major issue in my life. I might be different that the person you used to know.” That fear of redefining ourselves, and potentially alienating others, is worrisome. Similarly, social acceptance amongst peers may be reduced (especially in the cases of smoking, drinking and drug use). In a difficult way this is beneficial, helping you identify those who truly have your best interests at heart.


Flickr: thomasmperry

• Believing in a genetic predisposition fallacy: All too often, we blame our own personal failings on a genetic predisposition. True, there is evidence that if a father is an alcoholic, the son has a higher chance of being one too. However, this is an excuse more often than it is a cause. A lack of personal problem ownership was born of armchair psychology and our desire to find faults in others before ourselves. Blaming everything on mommy will get you nowhere, only if you take ownership of your habits can you overcome them.
• Feelings of despair or discouragement: When you don’t understand the reasons for a bad habit, or don’t believe that it can be overcome, feelings of despair can sabotage your chances of success. The “why try” response gets established in the forefront of your thought patterns. This sense of discouragement gets stronger with each failed attempt to quit your bad habit. This is counterintuitive and negative thinking; logically speaking you should be better equipped with each subsequent attempt. If it weren’t for this negative sense of “fate” or “destiny”, we would keep trying till we got it right, once and for all. Encouragingly, research is currently being done into the realm of neuroplasticity, where the findings indicate an ability to change habits at any stage in life.

When breaking bad habits, knowledge is a powerful weapon. Our fast-paced lives afford us little time to reflect on the causes of our conduct. We simply act as we have all along and hope to improve at some point. After looking at this list of basal reasons behind bad habits, I hope you have recognized some of your own personal motivators, so that you can work to correct them. If you can bring yourself to put in a concentrated, motivated effort to break your bad habit, these items should help you be better equipped in the fight.