Mindfulness for Breaking Bad Habits

good morning you guys Tyler wondering therapist here let's talk today a little bit about habits and how a couple of ways that using mindfulness can help in breaking a bad habit I was just thinking about this on my my hike this morning I was kind of walking along this Trail and there was one part of the trail where the trail has been really kind of washed out and then worn down by bikes and foot traffic and it's gotten carved deeper and deeper into the trail it got me thinking about just ruts and what ruts do when you get when you drive over something so many times in the same place it creates a rut and then the truck eventually can't get out of those ruts if you get your tires stuck in there and got me thinking about habit and the Power of Habit and actually specifically about the book The Power of Habit if you haven't read the book it's a great book uh it's entertaining and it's also got really good information and it got me thinking about a couple parts of Breaking Habits I started thinking about certain habits that I want to break in my own LIF Ste and one of them is I have a tendency to still picket my fingernails and chew my fingernails occasionally and I have tried to quit this for 20 years and I've gotten a lot better over the years but I still sometimes fall into it and I've tracked my habit of this long enough now that I want to maybe use it to as an illustration of how mindfulness can help with overcoming it so in The Power of Habit they talk about a habit really actually doesn't take any work once it's been established in fact that's why they become established is because our brains are actually used to trying to conserve energy and they want to be able to put their it wants to be put able to put its energy in other places and so that's what it does with habits is that once a habit is formed it doesn't take any brain power for it to follow through with it there's just something that triggers it off then we end up following through on it almost subconsciously on autopilot and then we get to the very end of it we get the payoff of whatever it is that the Habit is that we've been going for but then we also get all the consequences of the negatives that we've always never wanted to keep so in my situation with my fingernails if I look at that sort of pattern and how it has been developed over the years before I even knew it as a young child I was trying to manage anxiety and I didn't even know I had anxiety and and one of the things that I ended up starting to do was to bite my fingernails or kind of rip the cuticle skin off my fingers when I would start to get some kind of pain anxiety or boredom usually those were the two things I didn't know that at the time I just knew I bit my fingernails and I didn't want to because it was a bad habit and everybody told me that I shouldn't right and then it sometimes it would hurt and sometimes my fingers would bleed and all of that stuff right well if I start to become mindful about those three things there's a triggering event that happens there is a pathway that I then typically follow before I get to my bad habit and then there's the actual habit that I'm doing and the payoff that comes with it a lot of people are uncomfortable to look at this but there's two places in this situation that I actually can gain power if I use mindfulness the first one is a is becoming aware of the actual patterns that I follow before I get to my bad behavior so if I tend to like with my fingernails if I tend to start kind of feeling this like pressure underneath the tips of my fingernails which is always there before I end up biting my nails if I tend to start feeling myself rub my fingers more or start to pick apart like find where the little rough edges are whatever that is that's going to be part of that setup that's going to then end up with me finishing by biting my fingers Nails right so if I understand the pattern I get stressed over something usually I have a rough session with a client or I'm getting ready to go do some kind of a presentation or something I have something big at work that I'm need to take care of that causes the stress the stress then leads me to do all those little patterns and then I end up biting my fingernails if I can understand those patterns I can set something called bottom lines which is where I will change the patterns and start earlier to try to shift the Habit Loop that's been that I've been a part of for so long and I hold myself accountable for those things over and over again until I in essence shift to a new level of a new pattern the second way that mindfulness becomes helpful is at the very end of this and this is the uncomfortable part because most people don't like to look at the things that they're they've been doing and why they benefit them because they don't like the outcomes but the truth is is that all of us have bad habits and a lot of the times those bad habits are because they actually do produce some kind of outcome that's beneficial to us it just that it comes with a high cost too so when I look at the cost and the benefit that's really important because if I understand the benefit of what I'm getting I can actually start to lay that over the top too in a new habit Loop of I need a way in my case with my fingernails I need a way to of to cope with stress and to actually get some form of a physiological and emotional release when I feel that stress because that's what it provides for me it's weird it's like you you hear this all the time with like people who like cut themselves or like scratch their arms or burn themselves with you know cigarette butts or whatever and they say oh it helps me release pain it's like oh that's the same thing that my fingernail thing does in some ways is number one it gives me something to do to keep myself occup occupied and distracted a little bit but number two the payoff is is that it often releases stress in an unhealthy way through the pain that I feel or through the bleeding that happens right so now I need to include into my new habit Loop stress relief techniques to be able to release physical and emotional stress pain as a part of the loop and if I understand that if I'm willing to actually go and look at the payoff so you know you think about a bigger habit than that pornography use or something nobody wants to actually look at the payoffs to pornography but the truth is is that you've been doing it for a reason and if you understand those reasons you can use those reasons in establishing a new habit Loop that's actually more adaptive and going to still scratch the same itch that you've been trying to scratch with the unhealthy Behavior so becoming aware of your patterns becoming aware of the payoffs and then looking to change the pattern to a similar payoff without all the negative outcomes is is a way to start looking at changing and adapting and and Breaking Bad Habits so hope you guys have a good one we'll talk to you later thank you so much for being here with me if you found this to be valuable for you please hit the like And subscribe button if you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into please submit a question I'd be happy to answer it for [Music] you [Music]