When I was talking about how I live my life in a previous post, I know that people might think I don’t look like it, but that was the only way I was able to stop all my bad behaviors, living my life in such a way that I was able to stay away from my triggers. I have a lot of things that used to trigger me to take alcohol before and I was never a stay-at-home guy. I have loved going out before, but I realize that all my bad habits revolve around going out and staying with certain friends. If I don’t go out, it is always easy for me to stop my bad habits, but immediately I step out to spend time with some of my friends most of my bad habits come back automatically.
Sometimes I go months without drinking alcohol or going to nightclubs and immediately I chat with some of my friends or go out to spend some time with those friends, and all my bad habit comes back alive. This set of people are my triggers, and they also take me closer to my triggers. The environment and our gatherings are triggers for my bad habit and even if I try to say no, I always end up doing things I don’t want to do. I realize that for my own sake, I have to change my environment and restructure it and ever since I made that decision for more than three years I’ve stayed away from all of my bad habits and I’ve even taken it upon myself to create a new habit that most people seems impossible, and I’ve been able to stick with it.
It all comes down to your environment
There is a study that shows that 90% of people who go to rehab end up going back to smoking when they return to their environment. It is not as if people who are disciplined have a special power or they have a higher level of tolerance than you do. They’re able to strategize their life in such a way that they spend less time around things that can trigger them. Disciplined people can cope because they have to restructure their environment to stay away from negative things and this is what people don’t do. We only kill the symptoms and we leave the source. How can you stop a bad habit you’re spending most of your time with your triggers? How can you stop drugs when all your friends are drug addicts?
For every problem you have, there is always a source that you must eliminate. If you’re trying to stop your problem without eliminating the source you will end up going back to Square one. The main problem of people with bad habits is that they believe they cannot do away with the source and they focus so much on the symptoms. They end up going back to their bad habits and they believe it is fate. It is easy to be disciplined when you build your life around positive things instead of negative or the things that trigger you to do bad habits. If you’re trying to stop a habit and you spend a lot of time with things that trigger you you end up doing that habit because some of our habits are even automated, We do them unconsciously.
Thanks for your time.