Eliminating Bad Habits

A few years ago, I had developed over a period of about 5 years beginning college, a habit of drinking energy drinks & soda, especially Red Bull. I knew it poses big dangers to health but just wasn’t able to stop myself from drinking these beverages daily. So I started to muster my will power and tell myself that I will stop myself from consuming these drinks but wasn’t making any progress at all. So I did a lot of research on how to overcome bad habits that I could learn and apply in order to keep my body in a healthy state.

Swami Ji has a great video on changing habits

The biggest lesson I learnt was, we cannot get rid of bad habits, we can ONLY REPLACE them with new ones. I decided to replace the energy drinks & soda with water & tea. It’s been many years now and red bull & soda are a distant memory.

The number 1 factor was the help of my accountability coach George from coach.me. Getting a coach who we can be accountable to is very important, otherwise we are used to giving excuses and telling lies to ourselves. For most of us, its easier to be accountable to a coach than to ourselves. The biggest thing it does is we stop giving excuses, because the opposite of accountability is excuses.

When I was trying to build new habits in the beginning using my will power,  I often found myself going back to the same old habits because will power is a limited resource and it depletes as the day progresses which is when I noticed myself going back to the old habits. With the help of a coach, I used the power of accountability to my advantage and have been able to overcome the temptations of going back to the old habits.