This column will change your life: making and breaking...
Rated • 4 reviews • self improvement • guardian.co.uk
".... Habits are meant to be difficult to change.
The subtler problem is that we tend to think about habit change wrongly. (I'm not talking about physiological addictions.) We get trapped in a paradox: we want to, say, stop watching so much TV, but on the other hand, demonstrably, we also want to watch lots of TV after all, we keep doing it so what we really want, it seems, is to stop wanting. We're mired deep in what the Greeks called "akrasia": deciding on the best course of action, then doing something else. The way round this, says Newby-Clark and others, is to see that habits are responses to needs. This sounds obvious, but countless efforts at habit change ignore its implications. If you eat badly, you might resolve to start eating well, but if you're eating burgers and ice-cream to feel comforted, relaxed and happy, trying to replace them with broccoli and carrot juice is like dealing with a leaky bathroom tap by repainting the kitchen. What's required isn't a better diet, but an alternative way to feel comforted and relaxed. "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken," Dr Johnson observed gloomily, but maybe by looking at the problem differently we can still, Houdini-like, slip out of them." Excerpted from Guardian article by Oliver Burkeman. More on the page.
Good points which are usually ignored regarding changing habits...I for instance, am always planning to spend less time on the computer! Usually not keen on these types of articles but every now and then I find one which makes a good point.
