Facing Our Temptations

As human beings, we have many good habits that we’ve formed and held onto in our lives and then there are some bad habits that we’d really like to dump. Like most of us, you have probably observed and experienced how very difficult it is to change a bad habit, whether the bad habit is overeating, overworking, sleeping too much or too little, watching too much TV, checking our email or text compulsively or some even worse habit or addiction.

Thinking about this recently reminded me to look again at a book I read some years ago. I believe it’s one that can shed tremendous light on our habits including how to form good ones and how to break bad ones. The book is Living Beautifully by Pema Chodron.

I must admit that even though I’ve formed lots of good habits that have led to some very wonderful and rewarding successes in parts of my life, I’ve also had some bad habits that have hurt me, and it’s been so very frustrating for me to try to break or change the bad ones only to fail and fall back into them. But Pema’s book has some real answers and directions that, so far, seem to be quite a breakthrough.

First of all, she outlines that part of the reason we have trouble breaking bad habits is because we are too hard on ourselves.  What most of us do when we end up doing something that we’ve tried to stop doing, is to get mad at ourselves, beating ourselves up with all kinds of negative self-talk. Then we try to repress our thoughts and whatever we did that got us to break our promise to ourselves. She strongly suggests that instead, we come to recognize that we are fundamentally good rather than thinking that we are fundamentally flawed.

Probably Pema’s biggest lesson for us is a bit surprising. She suggests that if we are trying to break a bad habit, we need to think hard on refraining from doing what we promised ourselves we wouldn’t do but DON’T repress it. In other words, face the fact that you are tempted or even that you give in and do it.

She goes on to say that many bad habits come from us trying to escape from uncertainty and fear in our lives, especially in particular situations.  So when we are faced with the desire to fall into that bad habit, we need to examine our thinking to see what led us to that point and then try to refrain from that action but not repress our thoughts about it. Tell yourself it’s okay that you feel like falling back into that habit but also tell yourself, in that moment, you are going to resist. And then every time the thought comes up, you do that again.

Pema has science backing her up on this issue.  She says, “Science is demonstrating that every time we refrain but don’t repress, new neural pathways open up in the brain. In not taking the old escape routes, we’re predisposing ourselves to a new way of seeing ourselves, a new way of relating to the mysteriously unpredictable world in which we live.” And so, in the process, we are hard wiring our brain to do the right thing automatically.

What I learned from Pema is already working well on a couple bad habits that I’ve been trying to break for years, and I am so pleased!! Try it yourself and you may well see what I mean and find success.