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How to NOT Do Something
Like riding a bike
Everything that comprises a healthy and happy life involves taking action — getting to bed at a reasonable time, exercising, preparing healthy food and so-on.
But getting there often involves stopping some behavior that you currently do.
Of the two objectives — starting a new thing or stopping the old thing, the “stopping” is way harder.
Doing a new thing is mainly about motivation and giving it sufficient attention to make it a habit, whereas stopping the old thing is akin to “unlearning” how to ride a bike say…
The fact is it can’t be done easily. If you learned to ride a bike when you were young, as most of us did, then you’ll always be able to do it. It’s like, well, riding a bike…
How to stop a bad habit
The very phrase “riding a bike” is used to represent things that once learned, are there for good.
So, you can see, the stopping something, the “unlearning” is the trickiest of the two things needed to create a happy and healthy life, so, what to do?
Thankfully, although very tricky, it can be done and the first thing to do is create “awareness” of the behavior and the surrounding pattern into which that behavior sits. In other words — what triggered it.
The second thing you need to do is resist going down the same path again. But this isn’t resistance in the normal sense — you’re not suppressing anything and there’s a very good reason why suppressing an urge is a terrible idea — I’ve explain why fully in Habit Guide itself.
So, stopping is hard, and it’s the main reason why change is so difficult.
Probably the single best thing about Habit Guide is the “stopping” process. It involves some key insights into the nature of thought and attention.
The stopping process is explained very simply in Habit Guide by showing what needs to happen to your moment-to-moment attention when you get a strong urge or craving for something you’re trying to stop doing.
Every book has its big take-away messages — one or two things you find so valuable you remember them for the rest of your life. Well, the best take-away for me is the “habit stopping” process.
If you internalize that one thing, then great change is possible and you have tremendous power. The reason for that is that it solves the biggest problem — the “stopping” problem.
You CAN’T unlearn how to ride a bike but you can just NOT get on it! Habit Guide shows you how.
All the best,
Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy
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