How to Eliminate Bad Habits
How to Eliminate Bad Habits
The thought manifests as word; The word manifests as deed;The deed develops into habit;And habit hardens into character.So watch the thought and its ways with care,And let it spring from loveBorn out of concern for all beings.
The Buddha
A cocaine addict, a working person raising a family, a seeker practicing meditation and service, and a highly conscious sage all have the same motivation: the core drive. We all want avoidance of suffering and permanent Love, peace, and safety. What separates us is our habits. Habits rule destiny. Our life is a sequence of habits that determine our course and evolution.
We all have a mix of good and bad habits. Bad habits cause untold suffering. Good habits serve us in the cause of our liberation. To understand how we got where we are and how to change direction, we need to understand the formation and transformation of habits. The seeker will need to release the energy captured by bad habits and transfer this power to liberating good habits.
Any pattern of thought or action repeated many times results in a habit with a corresponding neurosignature, or brain groove. The brain is composed of approximately 100 billion cells, called neurons. A brain groove is a series of interconnected neurons that carry the thought patterns of a particular habit. Attention feeds the habit. When we give our attention to a habit, we activate the brain groove, releasing the thoughts, desires, and actions related to that habit.
The good news is that the brain is malleable. We can change our thoughts and behavior by recruiting new cells to form new brain grooves. Every thought and action is recorded within the interconnected nerve cells, and each repetition adds new depth to the brain groove. If we repeat a thought and action enough times, a habit is formed. Continued repetition strengthens the power of the habit. Inattention and lack of repetition weakens the power of the habit. These principles apply to the formation of both good and bad habits. Positive thoughts and actions create good habits. Negative thoughts and actions create harmful habits.
We can use these principles to eliminate and replace bad habits with good ones. We can gradually starve bad habits to death by not giving them our attention. As we pay more attention to forming a good habit, the new brain groove slowly gains power. Eventually, the new positive brain groove dominates the negative groove, and good habits drive out the bad. Without this transformation, spiritual growth is impossible.
When we are assigned painful problems in the school of life, we need to do the homework. All too often, however, we play hooky by escaping into the pleasures of a bad habit. If we repeat this behavior, at some point we get addicted. We end up with the original problem and a host of additional difficulties associated with addiction. Addiction leads to wild emotions, mental storms, paranoia, rage, humiliation, chaotic relationships, job loss, disease, and death. We can avoid this by doing our homework, by learning how to be good pain managers. Learning how to manage our suffering is critical on the spiritual path. However, most of us slide down the path of bad habits early in our lives in our attempt to avoid pain.
Bad habits include smoking, use of drugs or alcohol, excessive eating, compulsive gambling, compulsive shopping, addiction to the internet, computer or television, addiction to sex, money, fame, work, activity, power, or dependency on others at the expense of independence and individuality (a condition known as codependency or relationship addiction). Although bad habits are pleasurable in the beginning, their eventual evolution into emptiness and torment is inevitable as they force us to act in ways contrary to our true nature. We want to express Love, compassion, kindness, patience, and courage.
To begin the process of transforming bad habits to spiritual power, we must recognize that the pain of the bad habit is worse than the pain of healing. Cultivating good habits is difficult, but it is more difficult to maintain bad habits.
There are hundreds of good physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual habits. These fall into three categories:
Constructive activities related to health, work, relationships, recreation, or hobbies.
The habits of a seeker: the spiritual methods described in this and other spiritual books.
The habits of a sage: spiritual qualities such as Love, compassion, forgiveness, courage, strength, and others listed in the spiritualalphabet.
The time to create these positive habits is now. Every time we repeat a thought or action of a bad habit, it maintains or gains power.
Procrastination weakens our will to the point that we think we cannot change. Before we know it, the habit has locked us in a prison