May 19, 2008

How To Kick That Habit’s Ass (When It’s Been Beating Yours)

“I get knocked down / But I get up again / You’re never gonna keep me down” – Chumbawumba

Sure, we’ve all heard motivational quotes that tell us how success is just picking yourself up one more time than you fall down, but in reality, when you fail at beating a bad habit that’s plagued you for years, you don’t just “fall down.”  You get knocked down, punched out, kicked to the curb, beaten to a pulp … hell, pardon my French, but you get your frigging ass kicked emotionally and psychologically, big time.  Rocky’s Clubber Lang is standing over your bloody, TKO’d body, saying “I pity the fool, and I will destroy any man who tries to take what I got!”

Ok, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but playing the sumbissive role to a dominating bad habit sucks.  Agreed?  We all want to be Rocky, but you gotta remember he didn’t win in the first movie – he coughed up blood and nursed a couple of broken ribs and some brutal bruising.  Clubber Lang even kicked his ass in the beginning of Rocky III – but the Italian Stallion came back. And no matter how many title bouts you have lost against your own bad habit, you’re going to learn how to win in the end, black eyes and all.  I’ll tell you how, after the opening act.

It All Starts With Declaring One Word: War.

Rocky didn’t go the distance by saying, “Gee, it sure would be nice to win,” or “Wow, I’ve got a great goal, check it out! (yippee!)”  No, Rocky did what everyone does when they tackle something that requires a hell of a lot more guts and power than they’re currently packing – they declare war and commit themselves fully to it.  They don’t hold back.  They decide they are going to do whatever it takes, that they will expend every resource possible, that they will crush every excuse … and in the end, they win.  They may go through hell, they may fail a lot along the way, but they come out champions.

Holy Crap, Dave, Do I Have To Have All This Drama?

No.  In fact, you’ve probably done this many times before when wanting to overcome a bad habit, and there was no drama involved.  Let me give you an example that most of you can relate to (and if you can’t, you’ll be able to conjure up some experience that’s close enough): Waking up really, really early to catch a plane.  Let’s say you had to wake up at 3am, and you know that ain’t easy.  But because you only had one shot, you decided you were going to do whatever it took to make it happen.

• Maybe you said “Crap, it’s hard to get up early,” and so you decided to go to bed a few hours early.
• Then you said, “Ugh, I hate running late because I forgot something,” and so you packed ahead of time.
• Then you said, “Hey, what if my alarm clock doesn’t go off?” and so you check your alarm three times to make sure it works.
• Then you said, “Uh-oh, what if I sleep through that alarm?” and so you set a second alarm to cover your back.
• Then you said, “Hell, I sleep through double alarms all the time,” and so you arranged a wake up call from a real live person.

Do You See The Pattern Here?  You Planned Ahead.

When you really, really had to wake up early – even if was against your nature – you did it by thinking through the obstacles that you might encounter and coming up with strategies to make all of them non-issues.  You decided you simply had to get up at 3am, and that nothing was going to be a permissible excuse.  You asked “What could get in my way?” and then followed that up with a “How can I plan around that?”

Notice how this differs from a lot of typical goal setting:

• You decide “Hell yeah, I’m doing X!”
• You discover that X is actually very hard to do and that things keep getting in the way (or screwing you up).
• You decide “Hell, this just isn’t working out.  Maybe I should rethink doing X.  I don’t have the willpower to make this work.”

No, No, NO, NO, NO.  Don’t let this happen.  Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.  You’re banking on willpower alone to carry you through, and you’re seeing how far it gets you.

How To Get The Upper Hand Over Your Bad Habits

People want the easy answer on this one, but there’s no easy answer.  It takes work.  But the good news is that it’s completely do-able.  Here’s what you need to know to get started.

First, accept the fact that this isn’t necessarily going to be easy, and that there will be a lot of forces working against you. Forces like your own internal resistance, the resistance of others, the inevitabilty of crap happening to you when you least expect it … prep yourself for this reality ahead of time.  That way when things go all to hell, you won’t be feeling small and powerless – you’ll be saying “Hey, this is just the way it goes – the challenges are no surprise.”

This is the first critical step – if you don’t do that, you’re always going to be struggling with the emotional overwhelm that comes when you think something should be easier than it is.  Remember, this is war.  You have enemies – internal, external, and neutral – that will make things harder than they need to be.  Accept it, so you can fight against it.

Next, anticipate – on paper – all the things that might hinder your ability to overcome this bad habit and plan around them. Revisit the struggles you have had in the past because of self doubt, or lack of willpower, or simply lack of planning ahead.  Think about the resistance you got from other people, and how that drained you emotionally – and begin planning around that as well.  Look back at all the random, neutral things that happened that threw your grand plans out the window – things like emergencies, diversions and urgencies – and prepare yourself to roll with the punches.

This is equally critical – if you don’t do this, you don’t know your enemy.  He/She/You will underimine all that you are working towards, and it will be tragic because it would have been completely preventable if you’d just done this step.  If the habit change is important to you, you will find a way to make time for this.

Finally, build your battle plan and keep it in front of you every damned day until you’ve killed this habit for good. The personal behaviors which allow this bad habit to thrive aren’t going to loosen your grip on you “just because.”  They will fight you every step of the way.  So will other people, and so will life in general.  That’s just the way it goes.  But if you keep your plan in front of you each day, if you remind yourself to work it each and every day, then you’re golden.  You’re taking it seriously, and you will make progress.

This is where the rubber meets the road.  If you don’t focus yourself on the tactics you need to use to overcome this habit as often as necessary, you will forget about it and revert to your old behaviors.  War is hell.  You’ve got to fight like hell.  Like Clubber Lang, you’ve got to attack that habit and “kill it to death.”

And That’s It.  So Go Do It.  Now.

No need to sum this up.  You want to kill a bad habit bad enough, you’ve got to go in with all guns blazing.  Not half-assed, not half-hearted, not half-way … you’ve got to slam it until there ain’t nothing left to be slammed.

The good news?  You can do it.  In fact, I’m going to use this exact strategy to squash a bad habit which has come back full force this week because … why?  Because I beat it ‘most of the way’ and then took my eyes off of it. Never again.  This time I declare war on this bully of a habit and go fifteen rounds until it’s nothing but burger.

And I pity the fool who tries to stop me.

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