The self-help gurus are saying we need 21 days or 30 days to form up a new habit. And that is wrong. There exist no magic number of repetition of a new habit or how long we need to build up a new habit. The University of London published that we need between 18 and 254 days or in average 76 days to change or form a habit.
It is much easier to change a habit than to break a habit.
We should understand the process between to form a new habit and to get rid of an old habit.
It is easier to start doing something new than to stop doing something without any replacement.
For instance, if we want to stop smoking. We should replace the smoking with something better.
We are addicted to that nicotine and to that ritual of smoking.
Eating sweets to replace the smoking is easier than to remove the smoking without any replacement. And eating sweets is even worse than smoking.
How to change a Habit?
We ask ourselves:
1.) Why do we have that bad habit?
2.) What is the worst outcome of our bad habit?
3.) What we desire when we overcome our bad habit?
4.) How we replace our bad habit with a new or better habit?
5.) How we reward us when we break our habit?
For example Smoking
1.) Calms down. Socialized with smokers.
2.)Promotes cancer, heart and brain attack. Promotes cancer in people who are with us. Kissing of a smoker is disgusting is like kissing an ashtray. Body and cloth smell terrible. Yellow fingers. Wasting our money. Addiction. Blocks our body energy. Worsen our performance in sport.
3.) To be healthy. To live longer. Not to harm other people with smoking. To be a better lover, because we don’t smell so. To save the money of smoking for a great exciting vacation. To feel better. To become great in sport, when doing exercise.
4.) To breath deep in and out when we are getting scared, impatience, angry, frustrated or have the desire to smoke. To accept and love all of our feelings. To learn to relax. To start meditation. To replace our smoking friends. Smokers love that everybody smokes and so they like to tempt to smoke. They are really bad and disgusting people!!!! Get rid of them!!! Without changing our environment we can’t stop smoking!
5.) To make that vacation, that we deserve after a 1/2 year of nonsmoking.
My Video: How to break a habit? https://youtu.be/cQvs0dSVxlU
My Audio on Podcast: RELAX WITH MEDITATION or see link in the end.
My Audio: https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/rudizimmerer/5/How+to+break+a+habit.mp3