Chapter 7: The Secret to Self-Control
Once a habit has been formed, the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear.
Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food.
Researchers refer to this phenomenon as “cue-induced wanting”: an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it.
You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it.
In the short-run, you can try to overpower temptation. In the long-run, you become a product of the environment that you live in.
“I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.”
The best strategy to eliminate bad habits is to cut off at the source. Reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.
For example:
Can’t get any work done? Leave your phone in another room for a few hours
Watch too much television? Move the TV out of the bedroom
Rather than make it obvious, make it invisible. Remove a single cue and the entire habit often fades away. Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.
People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than to resist it.
Well, I don’t disagree with any of this, I do recall, watching late night television couple of decades ago, and an actor on the show said “I really never could quit smoking successfully until I walked around with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, and just kept choosing to not smoke.” For some reason that’s what came back to me when I was reading this section.