Changing Habits: Sometimes Easy, Sometimes Not
One Saturday morning when I was a first year medical student, I got off the subway and stopped off at the bodega to get a cup of coffee on my way to school to study for the biochemistry test on Monday.
I got to my study carrel, unloaded my books, and drank my coffee while I hit the books. Within half an hour, my pulse was racing and I couldn’t sit still. The page in front of me was difficult to focus on.
“What is wrong with me?” I kept asking myself.
Giving up, I closed my books and went for a run. I took a shower, ate some lunch, and headed back to my desk. I still felt jittery, but I could focus again, so I opened my biochem book and got down to work.
Later, I realized I’d lost about six hours of study time.
“I bet it was the coffee,” I told myself. “Well, that’s it, no more coffee for me.”
I quit coffee cold turkey. Despite the withdrawal symptoms, my decision was reinforced when I only got an 81 on the biochemistry test. I was very disappointed and wondered if those six hours of study time would have made a difference.
***
When my son was an infant and taking two naps a day-oh, how I needed those naps!-I started eating fun-sized KitKats. My daily ritual was to get my son settled for his nap and then head to the fridge for a KitKat, one of my favorite candies, and savor it before doing whatever it was I needed to do while my son was sleeping.
Except 1 KitKat quickly became 2, and then 3-twice a day!
I decided the KitKats had to go. And they did. I finished that bag and didn’t have any more-until my next trip to the grocery store.
I couldn’t quit!
What was wrong with me?
Let’s leave hormones out of this blog post, because I really think they have something to do with those cravings, which I’d never had before or since, and focus on something I could control: my thoughts.
The thought that brought me to the fridge every time my son went down for his nap was, I deserve a treat. And I did. We all deserve treats.
But I was starting to gain back the “baby weight” I’d lost, the sugar made me tired and low-energy, and I just didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t give up this habit I knew was bad for me.
What was the thought that allowed me to give up caffeine so easily? (Not easily, but you know what I mean. I made the decision and I stuck to it.)
The thought was, I can’t afford to lose the study time. I think the even deeper thought was, I don’t wanna flunk out.
I needed a thought I could focus on intentionally that would help me commit to giving up the KitKats.
What finally worked was the answer to my I deserve a treat thought: Yes, but I deserve to be healthy more.
That thought felt true to me, so it helped me give up the KitKats. I haven’t had one in a while, not since Halloween, anyway!
If you have a habit you’d like to change, try examining your thoughts. If you unconsciously believe you deserve whatever it is you’re doing or not doing, it will be hard to change. If you unconsciously believe you can’t change, you won’t.
If I want to start walking every day, but my primitive brain is constantly telling me “I don’t have time to walk,” I’m not going to walk every day.
- Find the underlying thoughts that are stopping you.
- Question them.
- Find new thoughts, as true or truer, that serve you better.
In my example, my underlying thought (Step #1) is I don’t have time to walk.
Step #2: Question the thought. Is it true that I don’t have time to walk every day?
No, I could walk a mile between this meeting and that meeting, and I could walk the whole time my son is in his karate class. And on Saturday I can walk first thing in the morning because it’s light really early now.
Step #3: Choose a new thought. Based on my reflections above, I do have time to walk every day. So that’s my new thought.
Whenever I think I don’t have time to walk, I stop myself and say, “Yes, I do have time to walk.” Then I look at the evidence. I review my calendar and see I have 15 minutes here, an hour there.
Try this yourself with a habit you’d like to change. Start small, but start!
Originally published at http://dianemackinnon.com.
