Detoxify Your Life: Eliminating Bad Habits Effectively
	Out With The Bad, In With The Good: Replacing Bad Habits With Positive Thinking <  Previous Contents Next  >

Everyone has a mix of good and bad habits. We have only to realize that bad habits lead to unhappiness and suffering, while good habits lead to freedom and high self-esteem.

To fully understand why we do the things we do, we need to figure out how our habits form and transform us, and what triggers their development. This way, once we have identified and are able to separate the bad from the good, we are able to save enough energy and will to make the proper and better choice.

We can alter how we think and act by inviting only positive thoughts into our system. Positive doesn’t just mean bodily pleasure. Positive can also mean a simple ‘good morning’ or a job done well. Anything that steers us away from any kind of negativity is positive. Such is the rule of opposites in this world.

We can stop feeding the negative thoughts that breed inside our head by simply not paying attention to them. Bad habits are like spoiled brats. The more you give pay them mind, the greater their tantrums will be until they get what they want. Simply turn a blind eye and a deaf ear on them and, eventually, they will go away. It requires some level of stubbornness on your part, too, to make this work; but, hey, it has never failed.

Focus, instead on the good side of things all the time. Set your sights always on the good habits. If you consistently do so, you will notice that they will overpower the bad. You will also notice that you feel more cheerful and lighter after you’ve done so. You’re no longer greeting each morning with “Oh, great. Another day at work.” But, instead, greet it with “Oh, great! Another chance to work and learn new things.” See the big difference?

When a problem approaches, we often try to escape having to deal with them by escaping into the pleasures brought by bad habits. However, you have to realize that bad habits only give us temporary bliss. It does not solve our problems, but only shield them for a short time and trick us into thinking that it’s not there. Oh, but they still are. And we revert back to depression mode once again with more problems (the ones that have resulted from the bad habits we just exercised).

To discover good habits, here are some tips:

• Do constructive activities, like sports, exercise, work, etc. These will condition your mind to seek better things and activities, and distract you from having to dwell on the problems in your life. Once you’ve found yourself enjoying with a new good habit, you will be able to forget that your bad ones ever existed in the first place.

• Seek the positive. There are many techniques to doing so, which include hanging out with equally positive people, reading self-help books, listening to feel-good music, watching empowering television shows and engaging in meditation and calming classes. Always see things in a good light and avoid judging people and situations.

• Love and forgive. If you harbour negative feelings toward somebody else, the more difficult it will be for you to move on and think of positive things for yourself. Make love, not war, as the saying goes. If you’re confronted with somebody who gets on your nerves, you can wallow in your frustration for a minute and then snap back to the positive. If you maintain ill feelings about another person, this means that you are letting him or her control you. Surely you don’t want that, right?

• Act now. If you’re not going to start today, then when? The best time is now. If you put it off for later or tomorrow, chances are, you won’t be able to do it at all.