Habit in 21 days: forming, developing and consolidating a habit

• October 14, 2018
• Life style
• Ulyana Orekhova

The concept of “habits” is interpreted by psychologists as the need to perform some specific action in response to a recurring situation. Actions that unfold against the background of a habit are performed by a person automatically and give him a feeling of physical or moral satisfaction (or all at once).

Giving up a habitual pattern of behavior for any person is accompanied by a state of discomfort and stress, so the use of techniques that help ease the difficult transition to an improved lifestyle is always relevant. One of the most popular methods, which allows you to get rid of everything unnecessary and acquire new qualities within 21 days, is discussed in detail in today’s topic.

Dr. Maltz's "three weeks" system

The concept of “21 days” was introduced by the American doctor M. Maltz in the 50s of the last century and was based on his personal observations of patients. Dr. Maltz wrote down his findings based on the health status of surgical patients. He came to the conclusion that patients need exactly 3 weeks to realize and accept themselves in a changed form - after amputation, plastic surgery or removal of certain organs.

After a while, other specialists continued work on the new concept, and the doctor’s theory that a habit is formed in 21 days received many confirmations.

How long does it take to form a habit?

Let's start with something simpler. Time.

Almost everyone who has ever wondered how to acquire a good habit or get rid of a bad one has read that it takes 21 days. This is an average statistical value, confirmed by various studies conducted mainly in the USA, and it characterizes the period during which a stable pattern of habit implementation is formed in the brain. However, this number is an average and is not universal. For different people, the time frame for habit formation can range from 17 to 25 days, and sometimes more.

For example, for me this time is about one month. My conservative consciousness has a very hard time getting used to the new. But once a habit has already been developed, it is almost impossible to get rid of it.

But this is not the end. As we already said in one of the previous articles, if the habit has not become an automatic action, it is too early to rejoice. It is necessary to continue to work on it further.

Is it possible to take a break?

The answer to this question is simple and clear: no. This is highly undesirable!

To form a habit, you need to gather your will into a fist. No one can promise you that it will be easy. But if you make a decision, follow it strictly. Every indulgence you give yourself will increase the time it takes to form a habit and reduce the likelihood of success.

Bowen's concept of change

Much later, another scientist, priest W. Bowen, armed with the findings of doctors, created his own method of getting rid of bad habits in 21 days, which he outlined in the book “A World Without Complaints,” and this also became a sensation. In the version of the self-improvement technique he described, a person was asked to tie a purple thread on his wrist and wear it without removing it for 3 weeks. During this time, the subject had to control his consciousness, avoiding negative words and emotions, and if there was a “mistake,” the thread was changed to the other hand, and the countdown began again.

The theologian proved that a person who managed to maintain character and hold the thread on one wrist for a full period of time changed for the better and felt much lighter and freer. This marked the beginning of the development of a special “Bowen List”, the points of which a person was obliged to apply to himself in 21 days and as a result get not only relief from negative emotions, but also a lot of useful habits.

What to do with “breakdowns”?

Of course, if a person has the strongest motivation to develop a habit, he will be able to get up at 6 in the morning, go to the gym, quit smoking, etc. and so on. But how to behave in a situation when there is simply no such motivation, because you can “break down” very easily?

In this case, experts recommend adhering to the following tips:

• Work on your motivation. If you have a desire to instill a new habit in yourself, a simple argument “this is necessary” or “I should” will not be enough. In response to these arguments, the brain will begin to ask its own questions, the answers to which will often become a “disincentive” to the formation of a new habit. But the solution is simple: you must create serious motivation for yourself. Think about where the new habit will lead you, what prospects it will open up for you, how it can improve your life and how much new and interesting things it can bring into it. Imagine bright prospects as clearly and brightly as possible - only if the desired result is constantly “looming” in your mind, will you have the desire to do what you decided to do.

• Track your regularity. If you perform some action for 21 days, every now and then, skipping the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 14th day, you will not form any new habit. Remember that even one omission nullifies all your efforts, even though you were faithful to your decision for 19 days and missed the 20th day. So, do your best not to miss “classes.”
• Make an effort. In the process of forming a new habit, you will definitely encounter difficulties when the task seems impossible or you begin to be overwhelmed by laziness or the desire to give up everything. But no one promised an easy path. To overcome difficulties, you must use all your will and strength. Stress yourself for three weeks, make an effort on yourself - and after 21 days you will not only be able to relax, but also understand that everything you have done was not in vain.

From all this it follows that, firstly, any person is able to form any habit in himself, secondly, he will need only 21 days to do this, and thirdly, motivation and self-control.

YOUR HABITS: Do you have any habits that you want to get rid of or that you want to replace? Perhaps there are habits that you have long wanted to instill in yourself, but you still can’t? If so, we suggest you find out how habits are formed in your life, as well as get acquainted with effective methods of self-control and self-regulation - we invite you to take our proprietary course on self-knowledge, which will tell you a lot of interesting information about yourself. You will find the course here.

We wish you, first of all, to form the habit of getting to know yourself always and everywhere, but at the initial stage, 21 days may well be enough for you. So go ahead!

We also recommend reading:

• Storytelling
• How to determine the cycle of any habit
• Charles Duhigg "The Power of Habit" - summary
• Five Stages of the Change Model
• Paperclip Strategy for Habit Formation
• Strategy for overcoming bad habits
• 5 Mistakes When Forming New Habits
• How to Implement a New Habit: 4 Effective Strategies
• How to develop good habits and get rid of bad ones
• Overcoming Negative Behavior
• Formation of useful habits

Key words:1Time management

A contract with yourself according to Bowen

By tying a purple thread on his hand (even if the “dressing up” happened more than once), a person must solemnly write on paper a kind of “agreement” with himself and subsequently try to comply with it as much as possible. These are the rules for 21 days:

• remove from the house everything that you have not used for more than a year;
• never leave cabinet doors, drawers, or entrance doors open;
• everything that can be repaired is fixed; everything that cannot be repaired is thrown away;
• within 5-7 days, draw up a detailed timeline of time spent without real benefit, and in the remaining period, reduce these losses to zero;
• set up your family finances and draw conclusions;
• come up with 10 ways to reduce household expenses and apply them all;
• find additional income that also meets personal interests;
• learn something new every day;
• read a strictly defined number of pages of a good fiction book per day;
• Dedicate 1 hour daily to a hobby;
• play sports in a group;
• give up 1 bad habit every 7 days;
• exclude obviously unhealthy foods;
• try to see only the good in others.

To clearly understand the duration of the experience and experience a positive uplift from the feeling of positive dynamics, you should keep a “21 Day Habits” calendar. Approaching the completion of the project, a person will begin to feel proud of himself, and the possibility of “failure” will become minimal.

What is a habit

A habit is a specific action that is repeated a large number of times and becomes completely automatic. Moreover, over time, you will not need to make any special efforts to complete it.

Throughout life, a person can say goodbye to old ones and acquire new habits. Psychologists say that the adaptation time does not depend on the difficulty. They consider a newly acquired skill to be a repeatedly repeated action that is performed on a subconscious level.

Skills are formed based on the individual's behavior model. Bad habits are remembered much faster than useful ones. This can be explained by the course of action. If a person is focused on a positive result and wants to change for the better, then his nervous system immediately begins to work hard on developing new positive skills.

If you go for momentary pleasure, then in order to abandon an already formed harmful skill, more effort will be required.

Journaling

All your achievements and victories need to be written down in a diary specially created for this purpose, where you can paste both your photographs that motivate you to move forward, and positive pictures from magazines. In addition to your own impressions, your daily diary entry should contain the following 5 points with a detailed report on each:

1. “What important thing did I do today?”
2. “Who did I help today?”
3. “What new have I learned?”
4. “Can I reproach myself for anything?”
5. “What conclusions have I drawn today?”

By answering the questions asked, a person will be able to better understand his actions and learn to learn lessons from each situation.

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Principles of methodology 21-40-90

In total, there are 6 stages, during which a person forms and strengthens new good habits and abandons those that have become inconvenient. The first three phases of a long procedure are called “minor”, ​​the next three phases are called “key”. What are they?

Before taking action, a person must clearly understand for himself, and best of all, write down what goals he wants to achieve.

Opposite the notes made, you need to note all the negative factors that prevent him from becoming better, and vow to get rid of them by any possible means.

Social habits

This category combines those actions that are laid down during upbringing, and in the future, allow society to form a certain opinion about the person in front of it. What are they? Here are some of them:

1. slurping and talking at the table;
2. greeting a friend;
3. nail biting;
4. closing the mouth when sneezing or yawning;
5. respect for elders, etc.

Is this clear? Naturally, among them there are both useful and harmful. This is taught to children first by their parents (by reading famous works, setting their own example), then by kindergarten teachers, school teachers, etc.

Stages of Habit Formation

Going through the stages during which a habit is developed in 21 days follows the following algorithm:

1. Spend 1 day without resorting to old habits, try to behave as if the goal in the future is just a step away.
2. Maintain 2 days in the same state of self-control.
3. Mark the first week of changes in the diary and sum up the first results - what turned out to be difficult, what was easier, what still needs to be seriously struggled with.
4. Congratulate yourself on passing the first serious threshold in 21 days. During this time, the rejection of bad inclinations will already take the form of conscious overcoming and the person will be able to work more towards accepting positive qualities.
5. Maintain the plank for 40 days. The practitioner of the technique already feels freed from past negativity and is moving in the right direction with good dynamics.
6. On the 90th day of following the technique, everything unnecessary from the “past life” ceases to remind of itself, and the person, looking back, realizes that he is completely renewed.

Psychologists warn people who decide to follow the concept against self-imposed “vacations” between completing stages. It has been proven that even after deviating from the established restrictions for just 1 day, a person runs the risk of not returning to the fight against bad habits and letting things take their course.

Travel helps change consciousness and perception of the world

Visiting a new country not only gives you an unforgettable experience, but also makes you realize that there is a lot in life that you have not yet experienced. Then you want to live, see, know, feel, try... So you have lived 21 days with the right habits. What to do next? If you feel wonderful, continue to live your life to the fullest . Why go back to the old ways if you are much better now?

Did you know that every 120 days the cells of the human body are completely renewed? You have already lived 21 days in a new look! You only have 99 days left to become a new person at the molecular level. Don't stop, now you know that you can do anything!

The ability to refuse

Often bad habits, disguised as an annoying necessity (can’t relax without a cigarette, can’t cheer up without a cup of coffee), hold a person so firmly that he begins to give them the status of a manifestation of personal individuality. When it comes to giving up parasitic actions, the individual defends them with all passion, claiming that without the said cigarettes or drink, he cannot make decisions and will generally “lose himself as a person.”

A paradoxical situation arises - a person seems ready to develop and improve, but at the same time he is aggressive towards an imaginary encroachment on his comfort zone. Nothing good will come from trying to “pull” an object out of its shell, seeing such obvious resistance, because addictions are just the tip of the iceberg, visible on the surface. The reasons for this behavior are known only to the person himself, and until he wants to hold himself accountable, all attempts to improve his life are doomed to failure.

Self-control in the first stages of overcoming is very important, but it does not play such a decisive role in giving up bad habits as the person’s own desire to do so. You can’t lose weight by denying yourself the cakes you dream about at night. But you can convince yourself of the harmfulness of this product by watching a video that shows the unsightly side of their manufacturing technology. You need to hate the habit, and only then there is a chance to be able to give it up forever.

The main stages of habit formation.

1. Negation
2. Anger
3. Bargain
4. Depression
5. Adoption

Okay, okay, don't panic, it was a joke. Joke!

But seriously, my personal experience, as well as the experience of my colleagues and acquaintances, has shown that no bright stages in the formation of a habit can be identified. Either a habit has been formed or not; between these positions there is the work on oneself that needs to be done. It's like a phone call: either you call or you don't. You don’t plan to “decide to make a call”, “dial the first digit” and so on... So the formation of a habit is a linear process.

Ability to accept

As has already been said, the opportunity to accept something good appears only through the rejection of something bad, otherwise a person will find himself torn by contradictions. It is impossible to start playing sports and at the same time smoke, destroy yourself by drinking and at the same time lead yourself to a bright life. Therefore, the next significant point in the method of forming a habit in 21 days is accepting your unsightly side.

A person needs to see himself as if through someone else’s eyes and allow himself to fantasize about “What is his future?” Is it possible for this individual to live long if he eats only fast food, or to attract the attention of a good girl if his main interest is computer games? This person needs help and protection, because only from the outside you can see how pathetic he is.

After several such trainings, there will be no doubt that the unfortunate person (yourself) needs to be saved.

How are habits formed?

It has long been a proven fact that bad habits are formed faster than healthy ones, but the mechanisms of formation are the same for any type of habit (be it the habits of successful people or those who consider themselves failures) - repeated repetition leads to consolidation. What else is involved in the mechanism of addiction:

• reinforcement with positive emotions, a feeling of comfort (for example, a smoker is under the illusion that when he smokes, all worries and anxieties dissipate along with the smoke, and those who have started playing sports are familiar with the feeling of euphoria and “any mountain is within their reach”);
• simple habits are formed from 3 to 21 days, complex habits take from 3 to six months to form.

Step-by-step technique for getting rid of excess

The method of how to develop a habit in 21 days and give up everything unnecessary during this time is designed in such a way that a person has time to gain confidence in the need for important changes. However, the path to complete “cure” takes three months, throughout which you should continue to practice and not give yourself any slack.

In order to correctly distribute your forces, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with and put into practice the following algorithm for starting to implement your plans:

1. First, on one large sheet of paper, the shortcomings that a person sees in himself and the good human qualities that could eliminate these shortcomings are written out in two columns. This list can already be considered a direct guide to action.
2. Below the list you should large-scale, in a few phrases, describe your desired ideal state (complete harmony, internal magnetism, etc.)
3. It is necessary to find a stimulus that can serve as a permanently attractive bait on the way to the goal. At each stage of habit formation (21 days, 40 and 90) you can find new, more and more daring motivations.
4. You need to create a checklist of your achievements or keep a diary (how to fill it out is described above).

A beginner does not need to be upset if, when starting to improve himself, he cannot see big goals and achievements ahead of him. When a person remains in a “sleeping” state for a long time, it is generally very difficult for him to realize himself as a person with inexhaustible potential. Even if your first dreams don't go beyond a new dress, as you move forward and gain confidence, motivation will also take on larger forms.

Waking up in the middle of the night is bad, so you need to take a sleeping pill before going to bed

It’s hard to disagree with the first half of this statement, especially for those who often experience it themselves. A sleepless night brings neither beauty nor health. It has been proven that in this case a person suffers not so much from loss of sleep, but from the experience that he cannot fall asleep. Therefore, rather than turning over from side to side for several hours trying in vain to fall asleep, it is better to get up and read a book or solve a crossword puzzle.

Warm tea or milk with honey has a good calming effect. But accustoming yourself to sleeping pills is extremely undesirable. Just imagine what the composition of this small pill must be in order for it to make the brain turn off. Occasionally - yes, regularly - no!

Nature is wise and will not let you die from loss of sleep. This is how mothers often fall asleep next to their baby, whom they cannot lull to sleep all night, students with their heads on their notes, tired drivers who have parked their car on the side of the road and dropped their heads on the steering wheel. If you don’t sleep at night, then sleep during the day and don’t worry about it unnecessarily. Of course, you won’t fall asleep at work, so you can go to bed early and wake up in the middle of the night already rested.

Formula for success

Conventionally, people can be divided into two types - those who accept criticism and those who reject it. For people of the first type, the formula for success in self-improvement can be described as follows:

• maintaining a “21-day habit control diary”;
• reprimanding the shortcomings;
• drawing conclusions based on errors.

For people of the second type, any criticism will only prevent them from moving forward, because they would rather fold their hands and consider that they “failed” than risk receiving a secondary reprimand. For them, the formula for success looks like this:

• keeping a “diary of achievements for 21 days”;
• encouragement of every successfully taken step;
• assessment of possible errors with a detailed analysis of the cause of the “failure”.

In no case should a person blame himself for negative events that have already been experienced or are currently being experienced. That is, before the 21 days to form a habit are up. It is necessary to try to get out of a bad situation with dignity, without internal reproach, and with the awareness that such difficulties will not affect him again.

Habit

Habit is second nature.

Aristotle

A habit is a form of behavior characteristic of all people without exception, which does not require much volitional and mental effort from a person. We all get used to something in our lives and then habits become part of our nature and, to a certain extent, begin to control us. This has its pros and cons, which must be correctly assessed, so that, on the one hand, you do not be a slave to your habits and do not close yourself off from everything new, and on the other, you make habitual for yourself such things that it makes no sense to do with the help of strong-willed effort. We must also always remember that many of our habits can be imposed on us by other people and therefore, following these habits, we will act not so much in our own interests as in theirs. In this article I will tell you how to treat your habits correctly and, if necessary, give them up.

What is a habit?

A habit is behavior, a tendency to do something that has become commonplace for a person, constant in his life. We can also say that a habit is, on the one hand, an unconscious skill, when you can do something almost without thinking about it, and on the other, it is laziness of the mind, when you don’t want to think about anything. And we can also say that a habit is an unconscious, automatic pattern of behavior that allows a person to save his intellectual and mental resources. Also, habit, unlike conscious volitional behavior, allows people to do something several times faster. It takes time to get used to something. A habit appears after repeating the same actions a certain number of times. After this, the brain will remember them, a kind of map with the necessary algorithm of actions will appear in it, according to which it will begin to work in an unconscious mode. There are things that people get used to quickly and there are things that take a long time to get used to, and some things are even difficult to get used to. In any case, people do not get used to something immediately, but over a certain period of time.

Bad habits

People pay special attention to bad habits. Because people experience the most problems from them. These habits are not unreasonably considered a manifestation of the weakness and, to some extent, limitations of a person who is not able to manage his behavior for his own good and allows bad habits to harm him. Here we are talking about a person’s tendency to receive pleasure in a certain way, in which he closes himself off from many other types of pleasure that do not harm his health. For example, if a person is addicted to drinking alcohol, then this addiction deprives him of the opportunity to experience pleasure in many other things, such as, for example, playing sports, a healthy, sober lifestyle, mental clarity that helps to achieve success in various matters, the ability to be confident in yourself without additional psychostimulants, successful communication with women and the like. There is a lot that can be listed here. So a bad habit is always a person’s choice of one type of pleasure to the detriment of another. Bad habits can limit a person in many ways. This should always be remembered by those people who cannot get rid of bad habits only because they consider getting rid of them an unnecessary limitation for themselves. In reality, there are no restrictions here, there is simply a choice of what you can enjoy.

The benefits of habits

Habits can be beneficial in themselves. There is nothing superfluous, incorrect or unnecessary in nature. And the task of habits is to simplify our lives. As I wrote above, habits allow us to transfer various types of activities into an automatic mode, in which, firstly, the speed of our performance of these types of activities to which we are accustomed increases, and secondly, we do not waste unnecessary resources of our body for their implementation. Take, for example, a person’s psycho-emotional state - it will turn out to be much more stable if he deals with things that are familiar to him than with new, unknown, incomprehensible ones. Everything new, unusual, unstudied can be fraught with a potential threat, so a person needs to understand it properly, which will require certain efforts and, consequently, resources from him. But everything familiar and familiar allows you to do without any fear and use what a person knows well and what does not need to be re-learned, researched, tested. We all have some habits; it’s impossible to live without them.

It is also important to understand that by doing familiar things and using familiar things, and in general dealing primarily with everything familiar and familiar, a person can free up time for himself, either for rest, if he needs it, or for learning something new. If we had to constantly deal with everything new, we simply would not be able to withstand such a load on our psyche and intellect - we would have to constantly re-learn everything. And so, we can get used to, say, familiar products and use them without any fear of running into something harmful and of poor quality. True, this is used by those who manipulate people with the help of habits, so let’s now talk about their harm.

Harmful habits

Every medal has two sides. And harm can come from anything, including habits. Personally, I consider any habits, first of all, a weakness that is easy to take advantage of. Although we can do a lot of things automatically with their help, for example, drive a car without thinking about our actions or doing our work, but at the same time, by abusing everything familiar, we become very predictable and do not develop our adaptive skills. Succumbing to habits, people begin to close themselves off from everything new, to the detriment of their interests. Even worse, they begin to fear everything new, becoming vulnerable in the face of any changes and progress. A person’s brain becomes ossified and his psyche becomes weak when he deals with everything familiar, avoiding everything new. And therefore, those who are open to the new will be able to surpass it in many ways.

It is also impossible not to say about the ways of manipulating people with the help of habits. Many people do not notice this or do not want to notice that they are very often manipulated using their habits. In the same business this happens all the time. For example, very often customers are lured to some new store with various promotions, discounts, low prices and the like. And then, when people get used to this store, the prices in it gradually rise, but people, out of habit, still continue to buy various goods in it, even at very unprofitable prices. This does not always work and not with everyone, but some of the clients can be lured and retained in this way. Or goods that people are already accustomed to may lose a lot in quality over time, but they will still buy them out of habit, without noticing any difference or not attaching much importance to this point. So there may be many options for hidden influence on people who, due to their habits, become predictable and do not perceive various information critically enough, especially partially familiar ones.

Habits prevent us from expanding our internal picture of the world; because of them, we do not notice or do not attach importance to what does not coincide with our already formed internal images, and we are thus deprived of a colossal amount of valuable information that we could use for our own benefit. Instead, we use outdated maps of reality in our heads, which often fail us. After all, focusing on the wrong map, which has become such because it is outdated, a person will inevitably come to mistakes and dead ends. He will make a mistake in one case, in another, third, and thus his whole life can go downhill. For example, a person is used to some kind of work, but it is no longer relevant, society no longer needs it, so there is no point in doing it. And you won’t earn money, and you won’t build a career, and there will be no respect for you. This means it needs to be replaced with a new one. But a person can sit at this job until the end, because he is used to it. This is how people drive themselves into dead-end situations with their habits.

So no matter how tempting it may be to do familiar things and not stress yourself out again, thinking about something new and questioning everything that you are used to, you need to remember that getting used to something can greatly limit yourself by closing your mind to many new things. This does not mean that you need to fight all your habits; it is still impossible to do this, even if you really want to. This suggests the need to abandon them in situations where they are openly harmful to you or simply useless. And there are a lot of useless habits in our lives. Many traditions, rituals, and customs have long since become obsolete. There is no need for them. Therefore, you need to abandon them in order to behave more effectively and adequately. Something new, better, more useful and effective is constantly appearing in the world, so holding on to the old, familiar, familiar, but outdated and therefore absolutely unnecessary, is sometimes simply stupid. But habit, as we know, is second nature, so people often find it very difficult to give it up. However, it is possible. Let's see what needs to be done for this.

How to get rid of the habit?

Getting rid of a habit or habits can be either a very simple or a very complex task, depending on which person and which habits need to be eliminated. This task will be simple due to the fact that a person can be switched from his old habit to something else, which can subsequently become a new habit for him if he is very interested in something - some kind of profitable, some kind of encouragement, the opportunity to achieve success in a business that is important to him. People are, in principle, ready to give up the good for the sake of the better. You just need to competently demonstrate this best to them, so that they clearly and clearly understand what benefits they can get by going towards something new. Let's say a person is used to his job, and then he is offered a new one - a more interesting, high-status and highly paid job, which is simply impossible to refuse. There are no additional demands placed on him that could seriously strain him, so he only needs to make a decision and take a minimum number of actions to start a new business. Well, who would refuse such an offer? In other words, when something new is clearly more profitable than the old one, a person will forget about his old habits and begin to get used to something better, and will form new habits. People love everything new when they are not afraid of it. But they are not afraid of him when they understand.

But this task becomes difficult precisely when, firstly, a person does not realize all the benefits that he can get by giving up his old habits, and secondly, when he does not have the necessary willpower to give up them . The second reason is especially serious and much more difficult to deal with. Some people can run their lives so hard that they no longer care how it turns out. They are ready to put up with everything. As I wrote above, habits make our psyche weak and our thinking inert. This is because they relax a person. And a person must constantly overcome some kind of resistance, make efforts to achieve some goals, adapt to something new in order to maintain vital energy and vitality. And if, thanks to his habits, he lives in constant comfort, then many functions of his body, both physical and mental, simply atrophy. So some people cannot be forced by any carrots to give up what they are used to, simply because they no longer have those abilities, thanks to which they can become addicted to something new - these abilities have fallen asleep in them. So this, I repeat, is a fairly common and very serious problem that is not so easy to solve.

I have worked with people who have reduced their entire lives to rather primitive and often harmful habits. For example, this is gambling addiction, including gambling addiction, this is a terrible job in which a person simply wastes his life, this is a lack of communication with people and, as a result, isolation and limitation, and so on and so forth. A person accustomed to these things plunges his mind into a prison in which he slowly dies. Such people have to be pulled out step by step from their very limited and gloomy world. And in this work, their agreement that they need to give up their habits is of great importance. If they do not want this, then without radical measures their problem cannot be solved at all. And of course, they cannot help themselves, because they do not have the necessary strength for this.

You can cope with habits with the help of your mind and with the help of your emotions. Most people use emotions, it's easier this way. Habit is directly related to such innate feelings as laziness and fear. They, in turn, evoke a certain emotional state in a person, which prompts him to take certain actions. There are other feelings and qualities in the structure of habits, but the main ones are laziness and fear. Consequently, it is these feelings that must be influenced first of all in order to rid a person, including himself, of this or that habit. There can be many combinations here. For example, by freeing a person from the fear of something new, you can simultaneously awaken in him both interest in something and the desire to receive something, achieve something, and succeed in something. As a result, one emotion fades, another blossoms. And if a person does not respond to the bait - he does not want anything and is not interested in anything, then his old fear can be replaced with a new, even stronger fear, which will force him to give up the habit. This is how, in particular, they treat some alcoholics and drug addicts by instilling in them certain attitudes. Well, everyone has probably heard about the so-called coding, which in some cases is nothing more than suggestion. And by influencing the feeling of laziness, you can promise a person quick and easy results in some matter in order to get him off the ground and when he gets involved in the process, it will be more difficult for him to refuse it, after all, he already has some resources spent to start doing something. This is how people are encouraged, for example, to study. It’s not so easy to get used to, but once you start doing it, it will be easier to continue. A person values ​​his resources, so he often tries to be consistent so as not to think that he has wasted them. Let’s say, if you sell a person an expensive book, he will be more willing to study it and take it more seriously than if he got it cheaply or even for free. People are designed in such a way that they value more highly what they have earned with difficulty and for which they have given some of their resources. This can be used by ridding them of old habits through such a feeling as laziness. You just need to force them [or yourself] to start doing something new, unusual, preferably using some resources, for example, money. And then the person will be drawn into this process and gradually get rid of the old habit or at least acquire a new one.

So we can fight habits using different methods to get rid of those that we don’t need. This can be done using simple methods and using rather sophisticated multi-step combinations that allow you to deceive a person’s mind so that he is not afraid of new things and is not lazy. Naturally, we don’t need to get rid of all our habits, especially since this is impossible to do anyway. The main thing is to leave those that help us and not harm us. Therefore, friends, try, experiment, test different approaches to yourself and to those whom you want to wean from some harmful or useless habit, habits, in general, find the key to your and other people's minds. And then, sooner or later, a person will be able to get away from everything old and ineffective to which he is accustomed, in order to look at life in a new way.

Difficulties on the way to a new life

From the experience of psychologists observing the internal struggle of people striving for their ideal, we can conclude that half of all episodes of failures and “breakdowns” of patients occur due to the indirect fault of “public opinion.”

The social environment of a person, in which he previously felt comfortable, is an established cell that has its own norms of behavior and way of thinking of its participants. An individual for whom this shell becomes small has every chance of feeling universal condemnation and returning to past habits for fear of being left alone.

Experts recommend that an individual who expands the boundaries of his consciousness and is committed to change gradually introduce into his social circle people who have achieved mental balance or are close to the ideal to which the person strives. Over time, his need for people from his “former life” will completely disappear and the temptation to “fall into old habits” will disappear by itself.

Bad habits

What is a harmful or bad habit? Very often, a person’s ordinary imperfections fall into this category, for which he scolds himself, but continues to do it, because it is “second nature.” The habit of “being good” and conforming is very often harmful; a person ceases to be spontaneous and creative. The category of bad habits that are truly destructive include those that harm health and lead a person away from real life into illusion.

What are the bad habits?

• smoking;
• alcoholism;
• addiction;
• binge eating;
• gambling addiction;
• shopaholism;
• harmful manipulations with the skin;
• addiction to TV, social networks;
• nose picking.