All my life I was a nose-picker.
I hesitate even to mention such an embarrassing fact; and really I can only do it because, finally, the habit is no more. Where years - decades even - of will power, self-control, and discipline had signally failed to make the slightest dent, application of a simple understanding of the human brain wiped out this habit almost overnight. No pain, no will-power, but it's gone. Easy! How did I do it?
Habits, as I discovered when I took the trouble to find out, have a simple three-part structure. There's a trigger, a routine and a reward. The trigger may be a simple circumstance or association that triggers off a previously laid down neural pathway in the brain. The pathway controls the routine - that's what we actually DO - and simultaneously reinforces itself, because that's how neural pathways work. They reinforce themselves. The reward is a key part of the reinforcement. It may be vague - some ill-defined sense of well-being or fulfillment - but there's always a reward of some sort. There has to be, to keep it going.
So what did I do? I decided to add a punishment to nullify or counteract the reward. Nothing draconian. Just a quick trip to the bathroom to wash my hands every time I indulged my habit - probably quite appropriate for a practice slightly unhygienic! Only a minor inconvenience, but enough to make me think twice every time the trigger pulled... Do I REALLY want to put myself to all this trouble? Or shall I just leave my nose alone for a bit?
The effect was magic. Within 48 hours a habit of 40 years was on its way to the dustbin. And all without pain or will-power. I just couldn't be bothered with it any more.
Now I'm applying this principle to all kinds of bad habits in my life, from sleeping in when I should be getting up in the morning, to others that I wouldn't even care to talk about. Fines, meaning payments into my charity box, are particularly effective. In fact they are so effective that generally I end up paying nothing at all. The mere prospect is enough to get me out of bed.
We all have bad habits. And most of us have some sort of deep-seated desire to deal with at least a few of them. Try this simple trick of substituting a punishment for the reward and see what happens. It has worked for me. For you... there's only one way to find out.
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