We all have bad habits and we still keep them. Even we know the bad consequences to keep our bad habits.
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that our bad habits like unhealthy lifestyle with smoking, drinking excessive alcohol…. cause 50% of the death in the USA!
For instance smoking 18% of total US deaths. Inactivity and bad eating: 16.6% of US deaths
Alcohol consumption: 3.5%
Why do we continuously keep our bad habits that destroy our health?
Why can’t we resist bad habits?
1.) To feel Comfort. We like to do whatever it takes to feel comfortable. Our brain is wired to reward us to feel comfortable when we have done something. Then our brain is giving us the feel-good hormone dopamine. Through our bad habit, we get that feel-good hormone dopamine.
2.) We want more. We want more of that feel-good hormone and then we associate the feel-good with our bad habit, like taking drugs, to eat sweets… After some time we have wired our “feel-good” with that bad habit.
3.) Social proof. The bad habit is wildly accepted. We see our friends also indulged in that bad habit so that we assume that we are okay. And we see many people have our bad habit, that validates that we are okay.
4.) Bad consciousness. We have a bad consciousness by our bad habit and we can’t quit. We like to suffer and for that, we need our bad consciousness. And then we run in a vicious circuit that promotes our bad habit.
5.) To Rationalize. We find a reason why our bad habit will not harm us for a short time. For instance: “Just one more won’t hurt” or “I’ll do better next week, I’ve just had a stressful day today”. These short time justifications keep our bad habit. We find reasons, why our bad habit will not harm us in the long term. Like, “Mike Jagger (Rolling Stones) is still a great star, so his drugs didn’t harm him.
6.) To give up. We know the consequences of our bad habits, like smoking. Still, we keep our bad habit. We think we can’t stop our bad habit and even say, we can quit our bad habit. We have closed our heart to find a solution. And we have no problem to discuss every solution, how to break our bad habit. – It doesn’t bother us anymore.
My Video: Why we can’t quit our bad habits? https://youtu.be/z5NrxInrXPo
My Audio on Podcast: RELAX WITH MEDITATION or see link in the end.
My Audio: https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/rudizimmerer/5/Why+we+can%E2%80%99t+quit+our+bad+habits.mp3