Breaking Habits

Bad or otherwise...

J. Wentworth was quoted in this posting Breaking Bad Habits at Cultivating Greatness

Making Changes Once you start, do everything you can to help yourself succeed: * Break your goal into several manageable steps so you can enjoy small victories along the way. * Develop new routines and activities to avoid falling into old traps. * Keep track of your progress. * Seek professional help and support groups if you feel the need. * Reward yourself for your hard work!It took time to develop your bad habit, it will take time to stop it. If you look for overnight success, you will likely be discouraged. Some days will be easier than others. If you slip up, don’t let that keep you from trying again.

All very sound advise but the post seems to have overlooked one very important part of the actual process...

As an individual who has worked through a number of 'bad habits' as well as a number of 'Ok habits' I can speak from personal experience. As an individual who has lead recovery programs and worked closely with many others who are dealing with habits I feel that I can speak from applied experience.

Breaking habits, good or bad, is a matter of stopping a behavior, plain and simple. Your feelings, fears, tensions, angst, frustration may contribute to the difficulty but they must be dealt with separately. If you want to quit smoking; just stop. And continue to stopping until you have actually quit. Here is the BIG RUDE SURPRISE - after you have stopped the smoking behavior you will still have all of your feelings, fears, tensions, angst, frustration to deal with.

So, why let all of those 'things' interfere with the cessation of a behavior. Don't allow those things to be the road block in the path to achieving your desired results. Don't choose to honor those 'things' over the clearly defined objective you have set for yourself. Just stop smoking - then address the next issue on the list.