How To Break Bad Habits | Jack Canfield

Hi, everybody. I'm here today with Patti Aubrey, who most of you know, she's been with me for more than 30 years, growing our business and helping us reach millions of people around the world with our books and our workshops and trainings. Patty's also a New York Times bestselling author, as well as an incredible coach and teacher who's been co leading workshops and coaching pros with me for the last several years.

Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here again with Jack and all of you sharing our advice on how to achieve your goals and create a life you truly love. This week we're going to answer a question from one of our students who's looking for advice on how to quit his toxic habits once and for all. Here's what he writes. I want to get healthy, find love, and achieve my financial goals. But I keep getting in my own way. I eat too much unhealthy food, and I'm so overweight and out of shape. I drink too much alcohol. I push other people away and sabotage my own attempts to achieve success. How can you help me overcome 75 years of limiting beliefs and bad habits?

Well, first of all, what I want you to realize is you're not alone. You know, I'm 77, and I still have some bad habits and limiting thoughts and beliefs that come up. The key is being aware of them as they show up and also then having a technique for helping get rid of them. So you've got to replace your limiting beliefs and your habits with positive ones. And there's some techniques for doing that, I think. Let's start with habits first. So you say you eat too much, you drink too much, and you push people away. So what would be the opposite of that will be eating healthy, be drinking less or no alcohol? And it would be doing things that engage people and bring them closer to you. And some obvious things you can do with that would be to make a commitment to take things out of your house that you know you don't want to eat, so they're not there for you. You know, I have, like, young people living in my house. Like, my stepdaughter still lives here and another house guest that we have, and she still buys a lot of stuff that I shouldn't eat. So when I go into the pantry, it's there. I've gotten to the point where I cannot eat it. But for months and months and months, it was there. And I actually had to put it in your room. I don't want to see it because if I see it I'll grab it. So one thing is to get it out of your life. Also make a public declaration of what you're going to do so people know you're going to do it. That you've made a commitment not to eat carbs, not to have dessert, not to drink alcohol. So that when people see you doing it, they say, hey, Bob, I thought you weren't going to drink alcohol. Or I thought you were not going to drink, you know, eat carbs. You're ordering spaghetti. What's the deal? So you build in that support system around you. And the other thing is build in things into your schedule, like exercise, like drinking more water, like going to sleep earlier, like reaching out to friends, like, you know, time to cook your meals so that you're not going to restaurants and eating fast food all the time so that you have the ability to build these new habits. And remember that a new habit takes about 66 days is the new research. So 66 days without missing a day. So even if you know that sometime later you might drink one glass of wine, when you're out with friends for 66 days, do it not at all. And that'll help build that habit in. So it becomes something that's easy for you rather than some real strain.

I think the other thing, too is when you look at. For a lot of people, I mean, I'm the queen of. I've probably lost, I don't know how many hundreds of pounds over the years. I think I finally got to a place where I stopped, like, having to do it. But I would go from a size 12 to a size 6 or then I'd be a 12 again. And then I'd drink too much wine, and then the next day I'd be starving and eat everything in sight. And so instead of just thinking, oh, I can't do this. What I like to do is mix up my routines. So clean up your messes, your incompletes, clean out your house, get a clean slate, clean out your cabinet. There's nothing in my house that is not good for me to eat, so that's number one. That way, if I do have a weak moment, I literally have to get in the car and go to the store. And I'm lazy, so I'm not gonna do that. Number two, don't think of this as that you're taking something out. Think of it that you're putting something else in. So I know for me, when I quit drinking, I was going to Hawaii with my parents, and I thought, oh, my gosh, they're gonna wanna do cocktails. And so I walked an hour, did yoga for two hours and walked back for hours. An hour. By the time I got back there, I was drunk and I was really happy. I wasn't. And life went on. But the reality is I had to. I didn't want to feel like I was missing something. So I defined other things. So if it was a healthy food or it was more a gourmet kind of food, they take more time making the food, focusing on the feelings I have when I don't eat that huge amount of carbs or something, something that I feel lethargic and that I don't want to go out. And then it's just that downward cycle. So for me it's really about those little hacks. And I know you talk about atomic habits. I love the Power of Habit. That book, I think is really powerful. It's very story driven. I would definitely check that out.

Well, one of the things I would say too that we know that you said this, you can't get rid of a bad habit unless you replace it.

With a good habit.

And so when we wrote the book the 30 Day Sobriety Solution, which was getting rid of alcohol in your life, at least temporarily. And for some people, they got off it totally. But the point being, five o' clock rolls around, used to drink alcohol, now you got an hour or two. What do you do with that time? And so you have to find something. Like you said, go for a run, go for a walk, practice your guitar, you know, watch a certain TV show, go for a walk with your dog. You know something, you're going to replace it that you know, I'm going to do that so that you don't have this void in your life where you don't know what to do. I know when I would do fasting for like maybe 10 days, all of.

A sudden I would alert the media.

All of a sudden, all of a sudden, all of a sudden I had two hours of time where I didn't have to cook the food, eat the food, clean up the kitchen. What am I going to do with that? So I committed to exercise. So I would go to my gym and work out. So the reality is that you want to replace a negative habit with a positive habit or the positive deposit it the vacuum, we call it the law. The vacuum will pull the old habit back in. And if you're going to go out with friends and they're going to be drinking, know what you're going to order in advance, you're going to Order a glass of like, you know, cranberry juice or you're going to order a glass of soda water or something like that so that you have, you're not tempted in that moment because you haven't prepared for it. So prepare for what might be the temptation. And also I would put a little sign on my refrigerator. This is something I learned from Tony Robbins a long time ago. He said, always when you're thinking about eating food, ask yourself, is this going to help me achieve my goal when I eat this? Am I going to be happier afterwards or not? And you might feel temporarily like ice cream, get about a one minute flavor burst, but then you've got this extra 3 ounces you're carrying around for the next three months. So is it worth it? Is, you know, what's the return on investment, if you will. So basically just ask that question. Another thing, like in aa, you have a sponsor, you're about to drink alcohol, you call your sponsor. So maybe you have a friend you agree to. We're both going to lose weight, we're both going to change a habit. So what I'm going to do is if I start to think I'm going to eat that pasta or order a pizza, whatever, I'm going to go ahead and call my friend Frank and say, hey Frank, I was thinking of ordering a pizza. Talk me out of it, you know. And so you have that thing you can do to have someone else who's going to be on your side to support you in that moment.

Well, I think one of the big things, big aha's for me was working with JJ Virgin because she talks about typically if we're allergic to a food, it has an adverse reaction on our body, right? So I was drinking like orange juice and having tortillas and bread and eggs for breakfast as a kid. And I was always this really puffy, chubby kid. The rest of my family wasn't, turns out, totally allergic to eggs. Same thing with alcohol. I can't drink it. And so for me, what I would do is take all the sugar out of my diet. So if I'm gonna replace an alcoholic drink with a non alcoholic, it's gonna be a Perrier, at least in the beginning. Today I'll drink a non alcoholic beer or have a club soda with cranberry or whatever it is. But in the beginning I wanted to neutralize my system. And, and so it's really important to check out some of those different things like J.J. virgin, Mark Hyman. Those are, those are, they're great with different experts.

Yeah, they write about food allergies and diet and what's good for you and what's not. I wanted to say one more thing, a couple of steps that you can take if you decide you want to change a habit. The first thing is to believe it's possible to know. Doesn't matter how old you are, you can change your habits. Number two, visualize what it's going to look like if you achieve it. What are you going to look like if you're younger? Looking younger because you're no longer, you know, eating foods that are ruining your complexion. If you're. What you're going to look like if you're thinner, the clothes you're going to be able to fit into, the, you know, people are going to say, hey, you look attractive, whatever. The fact that you can exercise more, you can go up and down the stairs without, like, you know, your breath coming, you know, running out of air and so forth. So visualize, what's the payoff for the new habit? You know, we talked about the question about reaching out to friends, pushing friends away. You know, one habit you might want to build is reflective listening. You know, for years I was always jumping in, having to be right, wanting to impress people, and people didn't like me so much because they never got to be heard. So one thing you can do is practice reflective listening. Like, oh, so what I hear you saying is if I understand it correctly and you repeat back what they said, tell me more. You know, and so you're now engaging in listening instead of pushing people away and give up the need to be right, because we have a wonderful quote in our mind.

Right or happy.

Exactly. Would you rather be right or rather be happy? And so if you're right all the time, you're probably going to ruin most of your relationships. So again, what's it going to look like? Visualize the other side of all this effort to change the habit. Have an affirmation. I'm so happy and grateful I now weigh 120 pounds or less. Have an affirmation. I'm so happy and grateful that I'm now listening to people and having more friends. And then visualize doing the listening, doing the exercise, doing the habit of eating more consciously. Evening review. At the end of the day, before you go to bed, close your eyes and ask yourself, where could I have been a better friend today? Where could have I been more conscious about my weight today? Where could have I been more on purpose in terms of my new habits? And you'll find that Answers will come up in your mind, memories. And then replay those events the way you would have liked to have if you'd have been more conscious. And that will actually put a little blueprint in your brain, your subconscious mind, so when you're in that same situation, you'll do it more effectively. And finally, I would just say you can add in a second, but finally just have an accountability partner like we talked about. Have someone that you're working with together on overcoming whatever it is that you.

Want to do and focus more on the feelings that you're going to have.

Yes.

And how amazing your brain's going to work and how great your sleep will be and how much more energy you'll have. Focus on those feelings because that's what will get you to the other side. If I feel fat or I feel hungover or I feel exhausted, I'm, you know, it's not a good feeling. So what's the opposite? I want to feel just vibrant and beautiful and ready to tackle what's next. And so that's all really important, I think, at this stage of our lives to make sure that we focus on why that healthy piece is more important for us to do bigger, better things than it is just to look a certain way.

Yeah. Always remember the why. And one final, final thing is keep score. If you agree that you're going to exercise for a half hour a day, every day, check that off on your calendar so you get a running level record of check marks and you can put it in your journal, keep it. You can put a little, you know.

We do that with our trainings and people love it. They literally have to write out every day what they've done, these action trackers and, and they do it in groups and it's awesome because now they have even more accountability. So I have a friend who's like, hey, listen, if it's snowing in Tennessee, go to the mall. There's mall walkers. Are you kidding?

Sure.

Yes. There's somebody everywhere.

Well, we've done things in hotels where we've just walked up and down the hallway for an hour.

Or the stairwells.

In the stairwells. Yeah. Stairwells we've known and loved. All right, well, that's it for today and thanks for watching. And again, what we'd like you to do is to leave a comment below, maybe share one of your toxic or self defeating habits that you have that you're ready to give up once and for all. And we'd love to see what you have to share and remember when you make a commitment publicly to a goal, it actually increases your chances of actually doing it. So make sure you do that. And if you found this video helpful, also make sure to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and make sure to subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one. And if you'd like some additional tools and videos on how to form better habits, check out our resource page on our website@jackhamfield.com and thanks so much for watching and have a great rest of your day.