In the process of breaking a bad habit, do you find yourself drowning in a self punishing cycle, consumed by a scarcity mindset? This is not what breaking a habit has to look like. You don’t have to buckle down and white knuckle your way to self change. With this creative, mindful approach, you can distance from old behaviors and establish new ones without cutting yourself down.
The only proper way to eliminate bad habits is to replace them with good ones.
Jerome Hines
Today is Day 54 of 2024.
If you started to create a new habit, or if you began the effort to break an unwanted one on January 1st, how is your self change journey going?
If you have stumbled a little or a lot, I have something that may very well make all the difference for you.
It’s easy.
Fun.
Fast.
Artful.
But first, a quick story on how this idea came to be.
One of my incredible students in the Sketchbook Entrepreneur Masterclass had a habit of checking her phone frequently and spending lots of time on social media. A habit I am quite sure many of us share (including me).
So she decided to bring mindfulness and creativity to her habit-breaking efforts to make a lasting self change.
She created bright, vibrant collage papers and cut out lots and lots of shapes from her colorful papers. She placed the pieces into a plastic baggie and kept her sketchbook and the baggie handy.
Each time she had the urge to pick up her phone, she’d select one of the collage pieces and paste it into her sketchbook.
As you can see in the photo above, Holly has pasted down 11 pieces of collage paper so far. I find this to be remarkable given that when this photo was taken, she had been tracking her thoughts and urges for several days.
Given that some of us may have 11 reaches for our phones per hour (!) when we first bring awareness to our habit, what is going on here? How is it that Holly is championing her mindfulness so readily and kicking her habit?
Most of the time when we decide we are going to change our behavior, we do so from a self-punishing energetic stance. We can be pretty mean to ourselves through the process of self change.
We will decide to “buckle down,” go “monk mode,” go “cold turkey,” isolate ourselves from others, stop all self-care, and save joy and fun and friends for when we kick the habit (with an unspoken subtext of “when we deserve it”).
UGH!!!
Such a Spartan, cold approach gets us nowhere. We humans have brains and hearts that do not respond well to arduous discipline.
We do, however, respond beautifully to calm noticing, adding distance between an urge and an act, and connecting with beauty, art, and desire.
Why Gentle Habit Breaking Is the Best Method of Self Change
Here is why Holly’s approach is sheer genius:
1) It is focused on bringing more awareness to one’s behavior for more meaningful self change.
2) It engages our hands in making a progressive piece of art which enables us to tap into our intuition, imagination, and problem-solving skills. This leads to our building more tolerance for the Unknown as well as new courage muscles.
3) It is relaxing, calming. It helps create distance from the urge to a new choice, a new decision. This position of our being an observer of our thoughts and behavior is essential for self change.
4) It prunes old patterns of behavior and associated neural networks and replaces them with new, healthier connections.
5) We can see the repetitive nature of our thinking and behavior as we paste down pieces.
6) We can see our progress as well as how our urges lessen over time.
7) We feel empowered and at the helm of our own life for positive, lasting self change.
How to Make Your Own Habit-Breaking Art Kit
1) Get a piece of art paper (something along these lines), a glue stick, and a plastic baggie.
2) Cut colorful shapes of paper from magazines, construction paper, or old wrapping paper.
3) Place your pieces of collage paper into the baggie.
4) Define your self change goals: decide the habit you want to break or the new one you want to create.
5) Ensure you are working on one habit at a time.
6) Each time you feel an urge to do the thing you don’t want to do, take a deep breath, notice it, and select a piece from the baggie.
7) As you are pasting down the paper, ask yourself, “What is it that I want to think and do instead?”
Voila!
Breaking a habit requires that we replace chaos with calm and meanness with meaning. The success of our self change hinges on how well we are connected to what we love and the larger vision for our lives, living intentionally while wrapping ourselves in kindness and grace.
We can make art out of what is breaking our hearts. We can reclaim our true selves as we create new habits that bring us clarity, peace, and health. The ultimate freedom.