NikithaBabita took a year off after 12th to prepare for JEE. She did that with a good intention to prepare for the exams. But Netflix had other plans for her. She decides to treat herself with just one episode every morning and this turns into an addiction where she ends up spending the entire day finishing the series.
Bablu wants to switch his career stream. Every day after work he decides to start preparation after relaxing for sometime by watching the news. He keeps switching channels, eats his dinner watching TV and sleeps late in the night.
Bargavi couldn’t help stopping by the Cupcake shop on her way home. The fresh cakes are so appetising. She told herself that one cheat day is not going to hurt much. She ended up eating 5 cupcakes under the pretext of tasting the new ones.
Bunny looked at his bank balance to check if he had money left for a Gym membership. Looks like he spent 20k on ordering food from Swiggy this month.
Ben has been planning to quit smoking for 3 years now. He can stay off when he is home. But once he goes to the office, he unconsciously takes the cigarette from his friend and then one more and the habit never dies.
What are bad habits?
Any habit which disrupts your life in a way that you are not able to carry on with everyday activities, affects your health and career progression in life. These habits can be classified based on the difficulty of breaking them into three levels.
- Level 1 -These habits are a result of clever products which have been designed to get you hooked to them. TV, social media, news, Youtube, Netflix, gaming etc.
- Level 2 – When natural processes like eating and mating are abused as sources of pleasure, they become an addiction. This belongs to a more difficult level as it deals with hormones in the body. Breaking these habits involves designing an action plan which can alter the hormones in the body too.
- Level 3 – This is the most difficult level because it involves usage of psychoactive drugs like nicotine to provide pleasure and relaxation.
While the above are well known bad habits, there are also lesser known bad habits like
- Nail biting & skin/hair/nose/lips picking
- Love addiction ( the rush of meeting someone new)
- Exercising ( it can tear your body down if you can’t limit it)
- Negativity (People want drama in life to feel sane)
Why is it difficult to break a bad habit?
All the B people above have honest intentions to break their bad habit. But the one major mistake done by all of them is to use ‘Will power’ to break the bad habit. But willpower is a limited resource. Whenever you are low on willpower, you relapse. Every time you relapse, you question yourself “Is it even possible for me to quit?” When you relapse over and again, you conclude “It is impossible to break the bad habit” . This loss of confidence ultimately leads to learned helplessness aka depression.
How to break a bad habit so that you don’t relapse?
1.Understand your brain
You find it impossible to break a bad habit because it is activating the pleasure circuit in your brain.
In the first week of the workshop, you will learn how to tweak the pleasure circuit to not let it run the show.
2.Triggers
While you no longer enjoy your bad habit, you crave it during certain external situations. A fight with the boss needs a cigarette to calm down. Not getting a promotion demands a drink to forget the pain.
In the second week of the workshop, you will go to the root of each of those possible triggers and release the pattern.
3.Action Plan
While you get the basics right, if you don’t have a map on how to navigate everyday life, you will be lost.
In the third week of the workshop, you will learn to close all the open ends.
Workshop details
The workshop is for 3 weeks where we meet on a video call every weekend. On the remaining days, you will receive a worksheet daily to work on your addiction.
The first batch of the workshop started on 11th July. If you are interested in breaking a few bad habits, Register for the workshop and you will be notified whenever the next session starts. If you are looking for a personal guidance, register here.
Happy breaking bad habits!