Stop Overthinking, Change Your Bad Habits
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-cardboard-boxes-on-brown-wooden-floor-4553182/
As easy as it sounds, the title above represents one of the most challenging things I still face today.
If you’re struggling with the inability to change your bad habits — even though you desperately want to do so for the greater good — you’re not alone. In fact, if we could all just take the first step and stop the behavior, that chapter of our lives would be closed. But sadly, there’s a lot at stake here — our behaviors, time, pain, and sense of hopelessness.
Let’s say I want to remove the bad habit of smoking from my life. As someone who has tried and failed to do so countless times, questions begin to build up in my mind:
“Why can’t I do it?”
“Why is it so hard to quit?”
“I’ve been wasting my hard-earned money on cigarettes — I need to stop.”
“It stinks and it sucks. Why am I still doing it?”
“I know that all it takes is to not light the cigarette, but…”
“What can I replace smoking with?”
“How do I pass the time without smoking?”
These are the thoughts that pop into my mind whenever I feel like a failure to my bad habits. I overthink, and I blame myself. Now, if I stop overthinking and simply follow through with my plan, will it work? Honestly, no — I don’t think so.
You see, the questions that linger in our mental space are probably the same ones you — or someone else — might be feeling right now. Addressing these questions and trying to find solutions might help you see things more clearly, but at the same time, it’s not as simple as it sounds.
Take the question:
“What can I replace smoking with?”
You might answer:
“I’ll chew gum or take a walk.”
That might work — if we actually practice what we preach. But rewiring our brains to adopt new habits consistently takes time. And without giving ourselves the right amount of time to cancel out the old and replace it with the new, we fall right back into the old patterns we’ve spent decades nurturing.
So, what can we do?
Here’s what I try to practice:
Stop overthinking.
Find time to address your questions slowly, one by one. By doing so, we face our demons — slaying them one at a time — instead of letting them build up while we do nothing. That’s why we overthink: we’ve practised thinking negatively for years, and without realising it, it became a habit.
But when we address our questions mindfully and gradually, we give ourselves the chance to see that it’s actually not that difficult to tackle our concerns — one step at a time.
It also allows us to take action in the same way: one step at a time.