Breaking Personal and Social Habits

The start of 2018 always forces us to think about our habits and what changes we wish to make. I am sure it is during this time that we make resolutions such as losing weight, quitting smoking, being a better friend/family member etc. The crux of what we are really doing is changing a habit in a meaningful way. This means either breaking it completely, changing the frequency or quantity of it, or adding a brand new habit.

I don’t believe in resolutions, but every so often I try and review how I was the last few months and see what changes I need to make. It’s sort of like having bite size resolutions, and its supposedly easier to manage and attain my goals. I have been doing this for over two years now, and I wanted to share some interesting insights, especially when it comes to distinguishing personal versus social habits.

Personal habits are things we do to manage our internal identities — they essentially make us who we are. The reason for those habits, also known as triggers, come from something internal — whether its an adverse reaction to life, or the way you were raised. Examples include eating, positive thinking, and praying. Social habits are things we do for our social environment, or to improve our social behaviour. The triggers for these habits come from our surroundings — friends, colleagues, etc. Examples of these include drinking, smoking, social media and others.

Keep in mind, although these are two separate definitions, they also cross over from time to time. Sometimes when are around positive thinking people, we will inherit that thinking and also be more positive. Other times we will be alone and crave a cigarette, which is a habit we picked up in our social circles. Cross overs from personal to social habits or vice versa are never purely good or bad, but they happen because of how we identify ourselves. In the mirror I see one type of identity, and sometimes thats not the identity my friends and family see. Sometimes I want to change the man in the mirror, sometimes I like who he is. It all depends on my emotional state.

Before discussing how I think habits can be broken, its important to note that I disagree with people who say habits can’t be broken, only replaced. I truly believe you can completely break a habit, it just requires patience and hard work. Replacing the habit is far easier, and requires less self determination because the ‘new habit’ is a crutch. The key is mental fortitude, but I’ll get to that further down.

How do you break a personal habit?

While there are numerous books and articles on this, I’ll present my perspective, which I hope is useful. Firstly, you must understand that every habit you possess is part of your identity. It makes up who you are. Without the habit, you will become someone different. It is important to acknowledge that there will be a change, and sometimes that change will have repercussions to other parts of your identity (or other habits) you may have. Since this habit is part of your identity, it means whenever you feel like failing, you have to ask yourself who you want to be. Is it the person you were with that habit, or the person without the habit. It always helps to see the bigger picture and appreciate the destination.

Secondly, now that you know the destination, you have to start loving the process. This is probably the part that gets people most confused. How can you love cutting back carbs, or going to church on time? You love it because its a challenge. You’ve got to find a way to love the process. The process has to be fun, or else you will never enjoy the change in your identity. If you’re cutting a bad habit, you know this is very very hard. I cut a tonne of sugars from my diet including chocolate, soft drinks, candies, and others. It wasn’t easy to do, but every time I had a craving, I would google pictures of obese americans or visit the mirror and lift up my shirt. The stuff I saw would make me laugh and be disgusted — and I am just talking about my own belly here. It was funny doing this because whenever someone used my computer I’d always wonder if they’d find my search history and judge me. Thankfully no one did.

Don’t dread the process — its going to suck, find ways to make it suck less or rewire your brain to do so.

Thirdly, look for triggers. This is an obvious one, but it requires a lot of self reflection — which as I have written about — we don’t do very often. Try to identify not only when you act on the habit you want to break, but why you act. Really dig deep as to why you perform that specific habit at that time. What made you want to bite your finger nails? What triggered you to raise your voice and swear? Why did you feel that way? Usually these triggers have an underlying reason, and unfortunately its frequently because something is missing. Once you find those triggers and identify what is missing, you have power over those feelings and you can solve for those issues. By solving for the underlying reason, you’re essentially cutting the snake (habit) at its head (trigger point).

Lastly, build your mental fortitude. We need to have control over our feelings and mental states in order for us to make good decisions. If you can work on one thing, it is probably this. Mental fortitude includes the way we talk to ourselves, how we visualize success, how resilient we are in the face of adversity, and how we logically approach our problems.

Weak mental fortitude means we act on feelings, or fall victim to our triggers. It means we give up control over our logical, and reasoning capabilities in order to ‘feel better’. Usually we don’t end up feeling better and it increases our emotional baggage.

There are many ways to build mental fortitude. Some of ways that have worked for me are:

• Meditation — Spending atleast 15 mins every morning preparing your mind for the day. Sometimes this means thinking about nothing at all because there is so much going on. Other times it means focusing in on the 2–3 things that may mess up your emotional state during that day. I see it as mix between clearing your mental search history and giving yourself a pep talk.
• Journalling — Journals are like emotional balance sheets. They are a snapshot of how you feel at a specific moment in time. They are useful for getting your thoughts out, helping you figure out how you think, and helping you track progress. It’s good to come up with questions as you write, this way you focus on the best answers. Writing also leads to clear thinking.
• Surrounding yourself with motivation — This means being around good people that inspire you, but it also means reading and listening to things that motivate you. Our identities each relate to something out there in the universe, it helps to follow that inner calling. For some, this may mean sitting and writing, or painting. For others, its a Tony Robbins video. Just get that feeling.
• Working out, eating well. No need to go over the benefits of this.
• Prayer/gratitude — always good to know that as large as your footprint is, there is always something far greater that could step on you. Be thankful. Also try being thankful and anxious at the same time — it’s not possible!

How do you break a social habit?

Breaking social habits requires a different way of thinking about the problems. Lets look at the four things I outlined above, and see how in social contexts, these are different.

When looking at personal habits, the man in the mirror is in your control. You know who you think you are, so becoming someone new is completely in your control. In a social group, your identity is combination of what you think your friends think of you, and what you think of you. You may think you’re the smartest person in the group, but your friends will spare no expense at proving the opposite.

So how do you stop smoking when all of your friends smoke?

Prepare yourself, and your friends for your future identity. Find out when your friends are smoking and how you will act. Decide exactly what you will say, and how they will respond. If you have good friends, they may accept your decision. If you have really good friends, they may be disappointed, and convince you to have “one last cigarette”. What will you say to them at that point? Will you give in to your old identity or find a way to a better you? You probably won’t lose your friends as you break certain habits, but in the end you must know that your success is far more important than their collective mentality. Be prepared for that.

I also find its easier to tell my friends that I am changing as opposed to just changing. In November I deleted SnapChat, Facebook and Twitter from my phone. A month later I deleted all my dating apps, and recently I deleted Instagram. I did it because I don’t like the dependency for those mini-dopamine releases these apps have on my productivity. In doing this, I warned my friends that this is how it was going to be. I am sure I have a bunch of Snap Stories and messages I have ignored, but they knew it was going to happen. I think this has made change a lot easier for me. Now if only I could delete or significantly reduce Whatsapp…

The second part about breaking a personal habit was making the process fun. When you are alone, its easy to find ways to make the process fun. When you are changing in a social setting, its very challenging because your social circle has defined what fun is. I have had many friends who quit drinking and I know it was tough because their friends defined drinking to be fun. If drinking is fun, than any process to stop drinking by default is defined as not fun. How do you change that mentality? Three ways:

• Approach adversity with positivity. Find some humour in a terrible situation. Laughing at your pain is the best way to both acknowledge and overcome it.
• Set expectations. You know the process is not going to be fun — it might help to tell yourself how hard it is going to be. Over anticipate the struggle so that can fight it easily. Easy to fight a dog when preparing to kill a lion. Although I don’t condone animal violence unless its metaphorical.
• Focus on the post game report. It’s challenging in the moment, but any bad habit worth breaking has positive effects after the moments over. In the case of drinking, enjoy the hangover free Sunday!

Ofcourse a fourth option is to avoid those situations. If you think about drinking, its avoiding going out or not keeping as close contact with specific friends. In todays world, I don’t think thats the best way to approach problems. I love my friends, and I also love parties. I am not going to avoid a party because I want to avoid drinks. I’ll double fist waters and rap to Migos sober if I have to, and believe me — I’ll have a good time doing it. No need to avoid — just face it head on.

People also think its fair to leave specific social groups. Most people find this to be easier than avoiding, and they simply bow out. I would only ever leave a social group if there was a net loss in spending time with the group. If the overall effect is positive (I have fun, I learn something, I share other values with them etc) than it makes no sense to leave the group. You have to ask yourself ‘does breaking this habit have such a net benefit that its worth losing this social circle?’ In some cases it will.

The last important point are identifying social triggers. These triggers come from the usual activities your social circle participates in. This could mean drinking after work with your work colleagues, or playing poker with your high school friends. The best way to change these specific social triggers is to replace them with something better for the collective. Instead of drinking, you could play board games or watch a movie. Instead of poker you can have a barbecue etc. It is not easy being the one that brings change into a social group, but you’ll be surprised as to how willing your group is. Its also worth noting, that if you are really strong enough, you could change the bad habits in your entire group — but that requires persuasion, and ideally a lot of internal motivation from each of your peers.

Mental Fortitude is the key

I didn’t talk about mental fortitude in reference to breaking social habits because the same thing applies to breaking personal habits. Having a good sense of self is important in anything you do, and I’d argue its the most important when making any kind of change. We tend to often give up control over our mental selves based on social validation from friends, or emotional triggers from things we care about. Keep your head up. Maintain your mental composure as its really the only thing that will guide you in anything you do.

To summarize, the ways to break personal habits are:

• Figure out who you are going to be without the habit, and aim for that bigger picture
• Make the process of breaking the habit fun
• Identify triggers that cause you to take up the bad habit
• Build mental resilience

To break social habits, you should:

• Prepare yourself for situations around your social circles
• Prepare your friends for the new person you want to be
• Make the process fun by approaching it with positivity, setting expectations, and focusing on the post game report
• Identify social triggers and trying to replace or change them
• Build mental resilience

I hope this article was useful in helping you break your habits and become better in 2018. If you have comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to message or tweet. Ofcourse, I would love it if you shared this article!