Reshaping your Journey with Habits

Habits are simply actions we have done consistently enough that we adopt the behaviour over time in a way that feels comfortable, familiar, and mildly compulsive. Substance use is a habit that often begins with repeated attendance at social events, or attempts to alleviate our stress or discomfort in the short term. It becomes problematic after we have engaged in the use enough times that we form not only a dependency on it to physically feel well, but sometimes to feel mentally well. I think the most important bit to remember is that habits are almost exclusively unintentional.

I may be a low key expert in bad habits; chewing my nails, eating that bowl of chips at night, calling people who cut me off in traffic “a big jerk.” But I can also say that I’ve relished in the feeling of accomplishment from breaking a bad habit and replacing them with healthy ones enough times that I’m confident you can too.  

There is this amazing video I saw one day that is powerful in its simplicity, and so perfectly able to portray the comfort and feeling of pleasure we initially derive from substances, and also how painfully unintentional the resultant need and addiction can be. It’s not that we are choosing to adopt maladaptive behaviours. It’s that we are choosing to try to make ourselves feel better with the available resources we have. Conversely, just like when I was able to ditch my nail chewing, my sense of accomplishment kept my motivation high to maintain the positive changes I made. In other words, it’s the acknowledgement of our own awesomeness that drives the change. We just need to recognize the strengths we have as resources and draw on our own abilities. This video breaks it all down. 

Stick around and see what these blog posts cover moving forward. I do feel pretty awesome having completed this entry. Kinda makes me want to do it again.