I know you’ve heard it before. Change in behavior only comes when you change your mind about the behavior. It takes 21 days to develop a new habit. All of that is true but, 21 days won’t become forever until the mind has been transformed and it will not come easy. That is where I believe we get stuck. When the going gets tough. What do we do when we are trying to break a habit when the going gets tough? Do we push through or give up and go back to our old ways?
I think one of the keys to changing bad habits is to know what triggers the bad habit and to have a plan in place for when those triggers go off. In other words, being prepared. It takes practice to connect the triggers and saying to yourself okay, I SEE that THIS is happening, what do I do next? Do I grab my cigarettes? Do I reach for ice cream and lose myself in it? Do I scream and curse? If you don’t know what to do next you do what is familiar.
So often when we plan to change we don’t have safety nets out there to catch us or help us not to fall back into the trap of old ways and habits. In the process of renewing the habits of the mind, we need more than a mantra, we need a detailed plan. Hopefully, this will help us the next time we are in the middle of change and life pulls a trigger we can recognize it and disarm it with a new response. And perhaps our new response will become our new way of dealing with triggers and rid them null and void once and for all.
~Nikki
Nikki's Confetti Life 