Comments on: The guilt free process to breaking a bad habit

By: Tim Grahl

Tim Grahl — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:57:33 +0000

Jess: Most of us do a fantastic job in self-loathing when it comes to our bad habits. Lots of guilt. Step #1 is to keep that in check. Reminding myself I’m going to fail doesn’t hold me back from success, it keeps me from constantly beating up on myself when I inevitably fail at my initial attempts.

By: Jess

Jess — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:09:58 +0000

hhmm, while I agree that taking time each morning to focus on positives is good, the part about telling yourself you’re probably going to fail and that it is okay …. em, sounds like a bad idea.
Our minds are always listening, even when we are only thinking. So do not think or say negatives about yourself. No more, dropping the keys and thinking “dumb ass.” or anything of that sort.
And no more telling yourself how hard something is, that tight-rope walker you mentioned is thinking, “Nice and easy,”
not “this is freaking harder than I thought.”

I have my own theories on triggers. But that’s a long story.
Happy Saturday. Jess

By: JimGf

JimGf — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 22:50:21 +0000

Tim,

Great post about breaking bad habits. There are some I’ve struggled with for a long time too – especially web surfing. I try to justify it by thinking that it’s sometimes related to work (software dev), but it mostly just wastes time. With flickr, I start with a link and before I know it, an hour or two are gone!

Your suggestions make sense and I’m definitely going to try them.

Thanks for a pretty useful post.

JimGf