Train yourself to lose bad habits.
I work a lot with clients at the beginning of our engagement on how to create new, positive habits, but for many clients, breaking bad habits goes hand in hand with creating good habits.
If you remember the story of Pavlov’s dogs, they were trained that when a bell rang, they would get fed. So after enough repetition, they learned to start drooling as soon as the bell rang, because that meant dinner was on the way.
So having trained them to drool when they hear the bell, how do we train them to stop?
The answer is, you ring the bell and you don’t feed the dogs. You still have the cue of the bell ringing, but you don’t allow the behavior or the reward.
It’s the same with humans. If you currently have a habit that every time you walk through the kitchen you get a snack, you’ll need to provide the cue, but not engage in the behavior and not get the reward.
And instead of resisting the urge, you need to just allow it. Allow yourself to feel the emotion of wanting to engage in the behavior and not giving in to it.
It won’t be fun, but it won’t last long, and it goes a long way toward breaking the habit.
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