It sure is hard to break a bad habit, but easy to get out of a good habit. You know, I have a few friends that smoke and they tell me they do it just because they like it and could quit any time, but have you ever been around someone trying to quit? That is a hard habit to kick.
On the other hand, something like exercise is so easy to get out of the habit. If you don’t have a training partner you can come up with just about any excuse not to go to the gym.
Ok..How habits are developed? A habit starts with a passing thought.A passing thought, if allowed to persist when we engage in it becomes a strong idea, this strong idea creates a desire for that particular object, the desire becomes resolve, which then leads to action. When we continue to repeat that action it becomes a habit.
A passing thought gains power and momentum by the attention and encouragement we give it. The more we attend to it, the stronger it gets. It feeds on the energy of attention and permission that we allow it.
A passing thought can be negative or positive. Hence this pattern could apply equally to developing positive or negative habits. If we follow this pattern we can learn to develop good habits and also to unlearn bad habits and substitute them for healthier ones.
Thoughts are extremely powerful. Nothing exists in this world that was not a thought before it became a reality. From a simple pencil to a complex computer, everything starts its existence as a simple thought or idea. In the same way habits start as thoughts. We can’t afford to not pay attention to our thoughts. Thoughts also have the power to change our mental and emotional condition.
Addictions of all kinds follow this pattern of becoming habits. It is at the initial level when it is a mere thought that if we are alert and conscious enough we can either encourage it or crush it. At this level getting rid of a negative thought is most painless. By the time it has become an established habit it is much more difficult to erase. When it has become an established habit this process (from thought to action) is so fast that we are unaware of its progression, mainly because we don’t question it, we don’t resist or fight it, instead we give in to it easily and have start accepting it as part of our identity. Now the habit is controlling us, we are not controlling our own self. We are helplessly caught in the clutches of this bad habit.
Cultural and family traditions follow a similar route. We become accustomed to certain ways of doing something and once established we quit questioning its ’rightness’ validity or benefit. As children we learn beliefs and patterns of behavior that we continue to follow without ever examining them. These can range from something as simple as eating ice cream with a teaspoon to how we treat men and women in our family. As children we learn passively, by absorbing and imitating what we see around us. Children don’t have the intellect to understand, question or analyze these as concepts, except at the most basic, concrete, black and white level. These become ’imprinted’ in their psyche and they continue to live by these ’rules’.
I have yet to come across anyone who sits their child down and teaches them that they have to be mean and nasty, cruel and ruthless. Yet children learn this. How? By example... which is a much more powerful means of learning than lecturing. Abusive parents produce abusive children, victim mentality produces victim thinking, and if you see generosity and compassion in your parents you will practice the same.