3 ways to give up a habit

A lot of people have said to me, "just give it up, it can't be that hard" but the mind has a funny way of creating strong links when we learn behaviour patterns. For instance a small walk to the shop daily at night to collect the evening paper can become a habit, then it can be hard to break given enough time that passes.

You wouldn't believe what can become addictive given the right time spent. If we break down addiction to its core function then it's basically those reward centres in your brain lighting up like Christmas when you are rewarded with something; a big win, a hit, made a new connection over the internet -- you name it. If it grants you a reward then you'll bet you can get addicted to it.

Basically your brain fills with dopamine and it likes having that around, so it wants more and more of it until you can't get enough of it.

That's why habits are so hard to break. Small habits that don't produce much reward -- like having a coffee first thing in the morning. Have you ever tried to skip that? Oh boy! I hope you haven't hah.

Anyway, since I'm getting good at mind control -- and not the type where I go around putting thoughts into other people's minds, but having full control over what I think and how I think it, I'll teach you a few tricks on how to retrain your mind into something else. Because that's all it is. Retraining your mind to something different.

1. Swap it out for a positive habit.

A lot of people are addicted to things that tend to be harmful to their life. For instance someone addicted to alcohol may miss a lot of work because they'd rather be at home drinking. One thing I found that when I replaced alcohol with coffee I was more active, and I still had the hand to mouth action that I strangely missed. Sometimes going for something that doesn't impact your life as badly is a massive win.

2. Give yourself a reward for being awesome

Hah. I used to reward myself with a fresh cut fillet steak every Friday that I had gone clean without alcohol. I'd go to the good butchers too, none of that supermarket crap. It was like a reward that I'd get for being a good boy. Turns out I really liked those steaks, and after a while it can be surprisingly enticing to not do whatever it is that you want to do to get to the reward.

It doesn't need to be a steak of course it can be any other manner of crazy reward that you want. I've been known to reward myself with cream cakes in the past! So, up to you!

3. Cold Turkey

Not a huge fan of this one, but it's just stop completely without any help, done. It's not the best of solutions because you can find yourself with a very big hole in place of where your habit used to be. To put what I am saying into context then I mean that when I gave up alcohol my day was completely freed. I had nothing to do, and nothing to fill it up with - so unless I found something to pass the time (which I did, re-runs of buffy!) I was going to be straight back on that bottle.

And that's it for now.

Hope these three helped! Will try for more sometime later!