Breaking Bad Habits

For real growth, we must resist the temptation to teach others and instead learn ourselves.

I’m not really one for new year resolutions. I find it adds unnecessary pressure on decision making. I also recently read that we need to stop forcing January as the new year and listen to our internal clock. Spring is the new year for nature; winter is time to rest and recover. I personally like the sound of that more.

I do however believe it’s good to find time occasionally to reflect on your own goals. Without goals, we can find ourselves having the months turn into years, with no focus, adrift, longing for purpose.

So I want to focus on breaking some bad habits, as well as making some positive goals.

When I think about what bad habits I’d like to work on, I find two instantly come to mind. I find myself recently reaching for my phone as a distraction tool. And I am the worst at keeping up with my recycling. Which, when I write it down, sounds rather petty. But I assure you, it’s one of the dark corners of my failings, that slowly creeps in on me, until the guilt forces me to spend time dealing with the monster I’ve created.

I watched a video earlier, that I’ll link to, where they were saying how bad habits can form to fulfil an underlying urge that is not being fulfilled. Sometimes it’s not entirely obvious, but it is good to take some time to analyse the thoughts that surround when the bad habit is taking hold and sit in contemplation of the feelings. What else could I do to help fulfil my needs in a healthier way?

He also noted that attempting to build new habits through forced discipline and guilt rarely work for long. Instead of attempting to create a habit through negativity, we must instead find ways to find positive ways to frame setting new goals. Instead of being hard on ourselves and hating on ourselves for missing a day, we need to focus more on being our own friend.

If a friend came to you and said they had an issue they were struggling to overcome, how would you respond? You wouldn’t berate them for relapsing. We need to remember and work on talking to ourselves as we would a friend.

So, with that said, one of my goals is to work on being my own friend. Work on building my self-relationship.

I was also listening to a Solarpunk Presents podcast episode earlier and they were discussing Hopepunk and positive psychology. These sound interesting and I’d like to do some further research into the topics. I might put an article together once I’ve got more details.

Distraction Doom Scrolling

I don’t know yet if it helps, but I’ve now enabled some screen time limits on my phone. This allows me to see an alert if I end up using YouTube or another app in the day as a distraction. I’ve also enabled an evening limit that is also intended to help encourage me to put my phone down, this way I can spend more time offline.

I think sometimes I can reach for my phone for different reasons. It could be I’m chasing a quick dopamine hit. Or maybe I’m feeling a little overwhelmed or I’ve hit a block in my thoughts and instead of facing it, which can feel uncomfortable, I turn to my phone as a quick distraction.

The next time I have one of these moments, I will try to take some time to reflect on why I’m really reaching for my phone.

Tackling My Recycling Monster

What usually happens is, I will put things on the side while I’m making dinner with every intention of rinsing it out and put it in recycling. But then the pile grows and by the weekend I have this guilt monster that I’ve made for myself that needs yet again to be dealt with.

For a while I was trying a method I learned called Ohio - Only Hold It Once, which encourages us to not be too quick to put something down for later, and just deal with it while it is in your hand. This approach did work for a while. However sometimes my wife will be in the shower while I’m cooking, so I don’t want to run a tap, so putting it off for later is really the only option.

Perhaps I just need to get a better habit for thinking ‘Ohio’ whenever I’m reaching to put something down for later. I don’t really know how I’d reframe this in a more positive way. But I know this is a blind spot of mine that I need to work on.

If you have any recommendations or goals of your own, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts too.

References

Building a better self-relationship:

https://youtu.be/V6hN8raThYk?si=MxTxdSWEWcI5wahV

Solarpunk Presents Podcast - Hopepunk:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0pqpgemIrinWC25owVS4sI?si=9NIWmfafQIevakHNQBX45g

Solarpunk Presents Podcast - Emotional Literacy and Positive Psychology:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1KZ4niKZEVEVSqwnS2hhbl?si=N4bEyGyvS5SiL0OYT60vlA&t=448&ct=448