Ep.11: The Bad Habits We Choose: The Self-Awareness view for Lasting Change

Episode Transcript

Having a bad habit you can't control

Welcome back to the Wisdom Practice Podcast. If, like most people, you've ever dealt with a bad habit, then you know how annoying it is to have something you're doing on a consistent basis that you have no control over — you feel like you're losing control over your life because you can't even stop doing this basic thing. Maybe you've read some books or taken some courses and found techniques that worked for a little bit, but you fell back into the habit, or maybe they didn't work at all and you're still looking for a way out.

In this episode I'm going to discuss bad habits from a self-awareness standpoint, and more importantly what causes them, because I think the true power to change something comes from understanding and being aware of it. So stay tuned, I hope you get a lot of value out of this, let's get into it.

I'm going to talk about something that pretty much all of you have had to deal with at some point in your life, maybe even now — it's a pain to deal with, and it really makes you feel like you're losing control over your life. That is having a bad habit, having something you do consistently that you wish you didn't. It could be something as small as going on social media too much, or something as big as drinking too much. Either way, it's something you maybe resent doing, you have negative feelings towards it, and you don't really understand why you do it but just can't stop, and it's not something you think the best version of yourself would be doing.

It's kind of terrifying, because you feel like you're losing control of your body and mind. You're doing something consistently every day that you're trying to stop but for some reason can't. It's like you're trapped in your body and mind, and it's doing whatever it wants, and you're just along for the ride. Frankly, it's debilitating — we have all these hopes and dreams, and how are we going to achieve those if we can't even stop ourselves from doing this one small thing?

So I think it's a really important topic, because before we can start reaching for the stars we have to do the work — understand ourselves, our triggers, our conditioning, the shadow work, as it's called. Otherwise you end up reaching for these things, getting to a certain point, feeling really good about yourself, and then sabotaging yourself because there's a belief or a pattern in the way that you haven't uncovered yet, and you go up and down, up and down. This is what causes that wave of life most people experience.

But when you actually start to understand what's going on, and spend the time to understand yourself and clear those blocks, life becomes quite smooth sailing. When something comes up, either you've already done the work so that limitation or objection isn't even there anymore and you can get to your goal a lot faster, or you've built up enough awareness that when something comes up you recognize it for what it is, and rather than spending years battling it because you think it's a matter of willpower, you take a step back, do the work, and come back. That's why I think self-awareness is so amazing — you see yourself in whatever you do, and rather than blaming the environment, you see what in yourself is causing this.

It's there to fulfill a need

That's what I want to do today: understand what in ourselves is causing this habit, because practically speaking, that bad habit is there for a reason. It's there to fulfill a need, because the mind doesn't waste energy on things that don't seem essential — and if it's there, it means some part of you likes it. That's a hard thing to admit depending on what it is, but it's not a bad thing. It just fills a human need.

If you've gone through any of Tony Robbins' work, he talks about the human needs — the things every human needs. The first human need is certainty: the confidence that we know what's going on, what to expect, the cause and effect — because otherwise it would feel like the ground shifting beneath our feet every second of the day, and we'd go into a complete panic because we wouldn't know what to expect.

The four needs behind every habit

As I go through these needs, think about your bad habit and see, intuitively, which one resonates with you. What need is this bad habit trying to fill?

Number one is certainty. Number two, funnily enough, is uncertainty, or variety — because although we need some level of confidence that things will happen the way we expect, if we knew exactly what was going to happen at any given moment, exactly what someone was going to say or do, life would get incredibly boring. So to balance that we need uncertainty or variety, which comes in the form of new experiences or new relationships, anything that makes us feel more alive and not in a rut.

Number three is connection, otherwise known as love. I use connection because most people actually settle for connection rather than love — anything that makes them feel like they're not alone. That doesn't always mean love, it can mean just having friends.

The fourth base human need is significance, importance — our desire to feel unique and special and stand out in a crowd, not be the same as everyone else. Those are the base human needs, and any combination of them, or a single one, would drive our behavior. There are two more, the spiritual needs, which are growth and contribution, but those don't normally drive bad habits, at least in the sense I'm talking about.

Smoking and drinking: filling several needs at once

So out of those four — certainty, uncertainty, connection and significance — which do you think drives your bad habit? Probably a combination of them, and the more needs a habit fills, the more compelling it is.

Take smoking. I don't smoke, but the reason people smoke is that feeling when you take a deep breath, things start to feel a little more settled, a little more certain — you get that certainty. You also get significance, because for a lot of people smoking means they're cool, they're interesting. So that's two needs. Then smoking is often a social thing too — people smoke with their friends, that's what they do together. So that's three out of four needs being met by one behavior. No wonder they're going to keep doing it.

Take drinking. You get connection, because drinking is normally a social event. You get certainty, because your stress levels go down and you feel a little more confident — liquid confidence. You get uncertainty too, because when you're drunk pretty much anything can happen, and you get new experiences. And maybe you get some significance as well, because your confidence has gone up and you feel more able to express yourself.

So try to understand what you think your bad habit is driven by. I think that by itself is a really powerful tool, because then you can start to ask: if I know this bad habit is because I want to feel more significant, what else can I do in my life that will make me feel that way — but through a healthier vehicle to get there?

Willpower versus understanding what caused it

This is why there's a big technique around replacing a bad habit with a good habit. It's a powerful tool, but most people do it without understanding the actual roots of the habit. They just replace it, and maybe it works, but if it doesn't, they don't really know why, and they go into this loop of frustration.

So if you know your habit is driven by a desire for connection, brainstorm: what else can I do in my life that will make me feel like I'm connecting with people? Just list out some things — they don't have to be crazy. I think the societal norm for breaking a bad habit is just "use your willpower, go cold turkey, you'll break through it." I definitely believe there's some value in discipline and willpower, but it's exhausting, and it's not the easiest way. I believe there's always an easier way, a better way.

If you're constantly frustrated because you're trying to use all your willpower to stop yourself every second of the day, your life turns into this wheel of frustration, overwhelm and disappointment — that's not really how you want to live. So although there's some value in willpower, I think a better way is trying to understand what caused the habit in the first place. If you list out those things — for connection, for example — and spend some time doing them, you may find the desire to do the bad habit goes down a little, because you're filling that need in a healthier way, and suddenly your brain doesn't need to do the bad habit.

Start with something as easy as the bad habit itself

Sometimes the thing with a bad habit is that it's really convenient. Let's say you smoke for a feeling of certainty, so life feels like it's going the way you want and you have control over it. Well, another way to get that is by figuring your life out — a crude way of putting it — but that takes a lot longer, whereas with smoking you can just reach into your pocket, get a lighter, and start smoking. It's a far more efficient way of fulfilling that need, especially if your life is in shambles — maybe you're about to get fired, or your relationship's going downhill, or your finances are all over the place. Dealing with that is overwhelming, so it's easier to just feel more certain by smoking. It's not a bad thing, it's just our desire to fulfill a need. Given the choice between spending ten seconds smoking a cigarette, or spending months or years figuring out what to do with your life, I can understand why people choose the cigarette.

So I'm not here to have a go at you — it's a very natural thing. But if you're listening, some part of you wants to change that. So what's the easiest, least painful way? Understanding why you do it is the first step, so we can be smarter with our approach. Second, list out things you can replace it with — but the biggest issue, as I mentioned, is that smoking or drinking is usually a lot more convenient than the alternatives.

So what do we do? Because you have all that bad habit energy, that momentum pulling you toward it, and you have to constantly fight it to do something harder, like sorting out your finances or your relationship. This is where you have to make a choice — align with the pain of what that habit is going to cost you in five or ten years, and commit to doing the work of finding a healthier way to fulfill that need. But start with something easy, really easy, and build up. Start with something as convenient as the bad habit itself.

If you smoke for certainty, and you can do it whenever you want, ask: what else do I feel certain about in my life? Maybe there's an aspect of your life you feel certain about — maybe you're really good at your work, and you feel certain about that. Use that as a building block to feel more certain in other areas. Or maybe there's a skill you feel confident in — do that more, do that hobby more.

That by itself isn't going to fix anything, don't get me wrong — because the certainty you're looking for comes from something you feel uncertain about elsewhere in your life. There's going to be an area of your life you need to confront, and by gaining more confidence there, the desire for smoking may go down. I'm saying: use something you're certain about that isn't smoking as a stepping stone, a replacement in a way. Spending more time on the thing you're certain about is probably a healthy alternative to smoking, and a way to build up to confronting the real issue.

Align with the pain now, not in five years

You can probably think of one area of your life that's really driving this bad habit, where you want some short-term relief — that's what causes the habit. So yes, willpower, fine. Replacing things, great. But the only way to solve this for yourself, to make it a sustainable fix and not just fall back into it, is to understand what you're really uncertain about in your life, what area is really lacking connection or significance. That's the self-awareness work — having the courage to look in the mirror and say, this is what I'm doing, this is where I want to be, and this is what's in the way.

I'm using drinking, or smoking, or social media as a crutch to feel like I'm getting there, but in truth I know in my heart I'm not getting there. So getting aligned with the pain of that bad habit is powerful — not to make yourself feel like crap, but to understand that your mind thinks this bad habit is going to get you somewhere, that it's filling this need, but it's only filling it fifty or sixty percent.

When you align with the future pain of it, suddenly the moment of bliss you get when you do it is nothing compared to the feeling of lack you can have in five or ten years, because that bad habit becomes less and less effective over time as your expectation of where you want to be keeps going up, and the pain around it gets bigger. So align yourself with the pain now rather than in five years — sometimes just doing that, you wake up one day and you've had enough. Hell no, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm changing right now. And that decision comes from the pain.