41–50 of 241 posts
Once you realise you are more of a sheep than you think you can do things like adapt your environment to encourage giving up the habit. Or replace the havit with a new more powerful one. Or use a star chart!
Yes! If you eat too much, take up smoking instead. That's one old habit gone, and a new one added!
Replacing bad habits with good ones seem to be the easiest thing for me. Going for that cookie? Go for some pushups instead when you crave. Usually your mind is just bored.
Even replacing the cookie with 100g strawberries and 100g yoghurt goes a long way. And why is that cookie there? Shop on a full stomach. Take a list.
fill your fridge with healthy food, and force yourself to leave the house if you want junk food
Quitting things for me personally requires tricking my base lizard brain. I recall an Onion News video with a parody PSA: "Smoking is Gay". You have to use the smart guy you to outsmart the dumb guy you. Set traps for him. Anticipate his moves and crush him.
https://www.theonion.com/new-anti-smoking-ads-warn-teens-its...
It’s just like decision fatigue: your capacity for it diminishes the more you use it (within a given time range). Instead, carefully curate your identity . This is described well in Atomic Habits. Train yourself to think “I am just not the kind of person who does x.”
The way I like to think of it is that it's possible to have willpower when I'm feeling strong and only have to make a big decision once - what's really hard is having to use that willpower over and over. Thus, I've always felt it's better to change your environment than trying to improve your willpower. For example, I got a ton of exercise when I lived in a city when the most convenient thing to do was walk everywher…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I like to think of it is that it's possible to have willpower when I'm feeling strong and only have to make a big decision once - what's really hard is having to use that willpower over and over. Thus, I've always felt it's better to change your environment than trying to improve your willpower. For example, I got a ton of exercise when I lived in a city when the most convenient thing to do was walk everywher…
Environment change >>> willpower
I am not a smoker, but I recently read through Allan Carr's "Easy Way to Quit Smoking Without Willpower" book. (There is a similar book out there called the Easy Peasy Way to Quit Porn, for those who are struggling with that.) The tl;dr is that it's much harder to quit an addiction with the mindset, "This thing is great, but I'm going to deprive myself of it." Instead, you need to realize that you've been deceived an…
We have all these ways of losing weight: you can poop it, sweat it, band it off, run it off, lift it off, swim it off, dance it off, on and on. And yet there is only one way to put it on (pointed to his mouth) with these things (showed his hands)
I don't mean to be insensitive to people who have real weight issues, I'm talking for the majority of people. We over eat by choice and blame everything else.
use your lack of will power to your advantage fill your fridge with healthy food, and force yourself to leave the house if you want junk food