the Effort to Change.........Breaking a habit.....

 Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to change a habit? I don't mean changing the way you habitually walk to school or the toothpaste you use. Now...you know me better than that so lets get into it. I'm talking about anything and everything from nose-picking to heroin use. How many of you have the habit of picking your nose with your finger and forgetting to wash your hands....say....while waiting for a traffic light to change? Have you found yourself doing this while daydreaming about something you have to do later in the week? Be honest, because this habit seems hardly as destructive as heroin use but it is a habit worth consideration for it is one that we've all experienced.

 Consider the junkie....the average street junkie or middle-class teenager experimenting only to find one day there is a gnawing pain in their stomach which will not diminish without a fix. This habit is a psychosomatic need of major proportion and, unless it changes, their health and every comfort they have will diminish rapidly in short order as need for  the drug consumes all their focus. Yet......it is just a habit....like nose-picking....and it can be eliminated by proper administering to the underlaying cause. I know.....because I came very close to adopting a heroin  habit when I was about 18.  DO you like that use of the word 'adopt' ? After all most of our habits are adoptions....and I suspect even extreme examples like fetal alcohol syndrome fit the idea. I've seen people quit heroin, cold turkey, after their habit had reached nearly 200$ a day. Mind you, this person had a will like a lion and was capable of many things. He was also one of the most brilliant souls I've ever known. But I digress.

So why is it so hard to quit doing something habitually? The answer is because a habit is emotionally discovered, developed, and maintained. Its easy for some to go into a detox unit, for example, and clean themselves of the drug problem. We see this kind of treatment happen all around us in the celebrity news and often personally with a family member or friend.  Many, many times..... this person returns to the habit after  trying to change because they cannot maintain the change. Why? They cannot handle the unfamiliarity with which sobriety makes them feel. Their emotions are what drive them back to the habit because they've only addressed the symptom...................not the source.

The source of the emotions which fund the habit are what must be addressed and until that takes place one will continue returning to the old way of acting because it is what one actually knows how best to feel comfortable with. Herein is where the problem becomes very difficult to deal with.

Our emotional habits affect every part of every minute of every task we do every day. The hands that are typing at this keyboard are moving within a spectrum which includes a habit of eyesight and hand/finger coordination. I learned to use a keyboard about 12 years ago....but I never created a proper typing habit....so I developed my own style...commonly called  hunt'n'peck. Think about that. I have a tenth grade education which as you can see above.....isn't much on paper. My typing is also filled with images of what I wish to say and with how much concise clarity I wish to type it......emotion!   If I don't feel as though I've expressed my idea well enough, I'll edit it until I get it right......emotion! So it could be argued that I had a chance once through a computer course to learn the proper art of typing but I didn't because I had a BAD habit..... of screwing around in a classroom....which is exactly correct! The habit developed from feeling left out of the family 'loop', so to speak, and in turn the clown/fuck-up/black sheep/bad boy became the habit to get me the attention I needed to fill my emotional needs. So I've had to develop a poor habit of hunt'n'peck typing which is still....typing.....to fund my emotional need to express myself  ! Hey.....I`m having an epiphany! I almost became a junkie at 18 because I was driven by an emotional need/habit to express myself in a very dangerous scenario.........avoidance.....the way I felt treated as a child! More EMOTION!! Damn.....how far back does this crap go?

Well......it goes a hell of a long way back.....in all of us....no one is unscathed.....all the way back to the very first day mom and dad did the deed which birthed the seed. So you see....whether the habit is nose-picker or junkie, wife beater or flunkie, boozer or buddhist, trumpeteer or flautist......we are the result of an adoption of one emotional habit on top of another after another after another. And even when we receive social accolades from our peer associations we are able to fall apart and find ourselves face down in the gutter of our personal stack of habits.....because so many of these habits originate in the stack.....as flawed, partial, predjudiced, emotional needs.

 So take time my friends...when you encounter your little egos (habits)....whether you like what you see or not....and assess what it is that habitually put you where you are. By unstacking these stacks of habit....and being as objectively perspective....as possible at any point in your  stack...... of their ability to create personal peer approval ratings you WILL slowly, but surely, get past your pre-conceived notions of humanity.....reduce your demands you place on yourself......and become far more at ease with yourself and all others around you.