Habits are powerful things. Once they are formed they have an ongoing effect on our lives—good habits can enrich our lives in wonderful ways, while bad habits can undermine and sabotage our future. And regardless of what kind of habits we’ve already developed, it’s important to realize that they don’t just go away.
So what do you do if you’ve developed a bad habit, and now you want to get rid of it?
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is we can never really kill an old habit. In the right circumstances, it’s possible it will reappear. The good news, though, is that we do have the power to exchange a bad habit for a good habit so that the circumstances that once triggered the bad habit can now be used to trigger the good habit.
For instance, if a certain feeling of anxiety or loneliness or boredom triggers a habit that we are trying to stop—say overeating or smoking—it’s not enough to just try to stop the behavior when the urge arises. We also need to decide what we will do when we experience those triggers. Otherwise, with no alternative routine that we’re aiming for, we’ll eventually relapse, and go back to what we use to do.
On the other hand, if we have another routine that we replace our old one with—say getting a drink of water, going for a walk, or talking to a friend—then when we experience those original triggers, we have something to do instead. And over time, this new routine becomes a habit. It’s not that the old habit died, but now the things that used to trigger one habit are now used to trigger another habit instead.
Because addressing a bad habit is more than just deciding what we’re going to stop doing. It also necessitates deciding what we’re going to start doing in its place.