How To Break Unwanted Habits

And keep the ones you want.

After grocery shopping, I stopped for a Subway sandwich for Del’s lunch. I ordered, paid, and left.

Halfway home, I glanced at the passenger seat and realized the sandwich was not riding home with me. Sighing and laughing, I turned around and headed back to pick it up.

This was the second time it had happened. You’d think I would have learned.

But habits are hard to break.

In this case, the habit was mine and that of the woman at the Subway.

She is in the habit of making my sandwich, taking my money, and handing me the receipt, but not the sandwich.

In the past, at Subway, the checkout person would hand me my receipt with one hand and the sandwich with the other.

Since the new girl left the sandwich on the counter instead, I took what she had handed me and walked away because taking what was handed to me was my habit.

That was not the only habit at work.

While waiting for the sandwich, I glanced at the clock on the wall and realized it had not taken me as long as normal to shop, so I was a bit earlier than I thought we might have lunch.

But I had eaten up that extra time by the time I had driven away and returned.

Have you ever noticed this kind of habit?

Perhaps you have a bit more money one month, so you spend until you are back in the same place you normally are with how much money you have, even if that means it is in the not-enough category.

I call this kind of habit the inertia habit.

Without paying attention, everything returns to how it was before, even if it wasn’t good.

We have all heard that it takes twenty-seven days to break a habit, and then it is gone forever.

This isn’t true.

Haven’t we all “broken a habit” for over twenty-seven days and then, without thinking, fallen back into the old way without awareness of it happening until much later?

Who knows? Maybe sometimes we never notice. Not noticing the return to an old habit could be an inertia habit.

It’s not that habits are all bad—they are the backbone of our lives.

The problem lies in not consciously choosing what habits work for us and not knowing how to keep the ones we want and eliminate the others.

The wise old deer in the woods that outwits the hunters and survives the winters does so by being aware of its surroundings as they change and adjusting its habits to match each new awareness.

Surviving and thriving are always in the minds of the deer. Not so for us.

Instead, life and all its complications and the belief systems constantly being sold to us dull our awareness until changing a habit becomes just one more complication and not a new awareness that enhances our life experience.

We can shift this, though.

We can choose new habits that serve us. But instead of starting with the habit, we begin with awareness.

• First, become aware of your habits.

Pick an area that most troubles you and become aware of it.

Documenting what you discover will help you stay focused. Keep a journal, or a spreadsheet, or notes to yourself, or pictures—whatever fits your awareness style.

During this process, there is one primary rule that you must follow without fail. It is the rule of non-judgment.

The moment you fall into judgment, the habit adds another root into your thinking.

If you find yourself judging, stop immediately, without emotion. Instead, use the feeling of love and kindness.

• A good laugh, a prayer of gratitude shrivels up those habit roots.

As you become aware of the habit, notice that it is really a habit of perception that produces a belief and then the habit.

It’s obvious what to do.

Instead of trying to break the habit, spend time shifting your perception to one that better matches your desired outcome.

Instead of starting with where you want to go, reset your perception by beginning with the truth of who you are, not the habit, not the behavior, not the belief system – no—the truth that now you are the perfect idea of the infinite One, indivisible good.

Even if you don’t believe this yet (well, how could we when we are stuck in the perception of human duality), choose this perception anyway.

Remember, perception builds belief, and belief builds habits. Start with the primary cause and perception, and choose the one that gives you freedom.

• Become aware of the beauty that makes up every detail of every life.

Shift what you look at to see the principle of Love behind it, and release any inverted or negative image presenting itself, especially concerning yourself.

Yes, this gets back to the details of life.

Instead of resentment of the sandwich woman or disappointment with my lack of paying attention, I had to release that perception and re-set it back to One.

In the process, I had to forgive us both.

This seems silly over just a forgotten sandwich, but if I can’t forgive the sandwich girl for not doing what I thought she should or myself for forgetting it, how can I expect the members of the world to stop fighting over essentially the same kinds of ideas?

This gives new meaning to choosing new habits.

Although it might appear as if it is all about us, it is the only way the whole world can shift to an experience of living as One, without judgment and within love.

One more thing.

Remember that sometimes, what we want and have paid for is not handed to us; we have to pick it up ourselves.

Here’s a how-to book on habits.