Tag: habits

Posted in How-To Guides

5 Ways to Break a Bad Habit

Posted on by Jack Flacco

We all have them but are too afraid to admit it. They dominate our lives, they control our routines, and they sour our mood.

What are they? They are bad habits. And bad habits is bad news for those wanting to live happy and abundant lives.

Let us take a moment to have a look at five ways we can break bad habits, and the benefits that come from overcoming weaknesses.

1. Confess the Habit

Mildred: “Judy, you may not believe it, but I bite my nails, bad.”

Judy: “I noticed, you have yet to gnaw off your cuticle to the bone.”

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to beating a bad habit. What better way to admit you have a problem than to confess it to a friend or loved one.

As difficult as it sounds, it really is easy to do. The problem lies with forgetting about your ego so you can grow into a better person.

If you find you cannot tell your bad habits to someone around you, you can take to writing them down on paper. Once you read them to yourself several times, you can either burn or introduce scissors to them.

In my case, I have done both. I have written them down and destroyed them, and I have told Luana about my deepest, darkest secrets as a way to throw away the insecurities caused by my weaknesses.

Yes, you may think that is extreme, but confessing our bad habits to others liberates us from carrying the burden ourselves.

2. Recognize the Triggers

Central to every bad habit rests a trigger. That trigger could be the innocent whiff of a scrumptious cake, the sight of a beautiful woman, or simply the craving for something that will calm the nerves.

Whatever the trigger, it will lead you to where you do not want to go. Therefore, recognize it. Tame it. And move on to bigger and better things.

It is easy to say, but incredibly hard to do. How do you recognize the very thing that causes you to stumble?

Self-reflection is an awesome power that all of us bad-habit harbingers possess. By finding a quiet spot and reflecting on what causes us to fall, we can identify the trigger. It will not happen overnight, but every moment we spend on improving ourselves is a moment spent overcoming a bad habit.

Sometimes, it is a matter of working through mock scenarios in order to determine the origin of the bad habit. Again, it will take time, but do not ever think it is time spent in a useless pursuit.

You will find the trigger. You will overcome your bad habit.

3. Replace the Bad with the Good

What is your bad habit? Is it eating late-night snacks before bed? Are you saddled with debt but cannot help spending more money on that fancy new vacation? Do you drink more than you should, even though you know it will lead to long-term health problems?

The best way to throw away a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit. Positive reinforcement is better than negative execution. Find the bad and lift away its effects on your life by flooding it with good.

You would love to eat a slew of late-night snacks. I understand that. Try drinking water, it will fill you and act as a cleanser. You have so much debt that you do not know how you will handle it in several months when the creditors start knocking on your door to repossess your home. Forget about that vacation and work at cutting down your spending. After all, you would like to have a future without worrying about who you owe, right? And that cocktail you are thinking about consuming? Consider having a soda, or, better yet, a tea. Always think about the future. Learn how your actions today will shape your tomorrow.

Do you bite your nails? Snack on carrots. Do you have a problem with wandering eyes? Think of the one you love. Are you prone to laziness? Find something to do other than watching television. It may sound harsh, but we are talking about getting rid of the things that hold us back from achieving our true potential.

4. Make New Friends

Every bad habit carries with it baggage. That baggage includes friends who are enablers. And enablers only have one thing on their mind—their own self-gratification.

Surround yourself with people who genuinely love you for who you are.

When you are with enablers, they will tear your down, strip you of your character, and allow you to struggle and fall in a pool of your own misery. What you need to do is identify the enablers and cut them from your life. How far do you go?

Think of them as if they never existed.

You never knew them.

The other side of it is you now have the chance to meet new people who will build you up, carry you forward, and believe in you for the person you are and not the person they think you ought to be.

New friends mean new experiences, which translates to new opportunities for growth.

5. Bring God to the Fight

Everyone may have a concept of what or who God is. For me, God is the creator of all things, the one who sacrificed his only son, Jesus, for the salvation of the many. Without God, I do not know where I would be.

When faced with a destructive pattern, it is good to know that a higher power, such as God, is there to fight on our behalf. We do not have to fight alone. Whatever the frailty, strength is always available. We can tap into it and not worry about the cost.

When our minds focus on eternity, the awful behaviors that plague us now do not seem so unstoppable. We can continue living, knowing there is always someone there to pick us up after a fall.

The trick is to permit that strength to course through our lives. In so doing, breaking a bad habit then becomes possible.

Posted in Freedom Friday, Other Things

Writing

Posted on by Jack Flacco

As many of you know, and as some have noticed, I don’t talk about writing. There’s a reason for that. I’m sure I’ll get my hands rapped because of this declaration, but I think it’s important to talk about, since this is the rare and possibly only occasion when I will speak freely about this.

Photo credit: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Photo credit: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

One of my family members calls me a machine. I’ll take that as a compliment. The other comment I get is I’m a workaholic. Again, I’ll take that as a compliment.

The truth is, before I started this site, I had taken an extended leave of absence from all social networking sites. I know what you’re thinking, “Nothing wrong with taking a couple of weeks off to regain perspective.” In my case, it wasn’t a couple of weeks. It wasn’t even a couple of months. Sit down for this.

I’d taken eight months off from all social networks. That’s eight months off Twitter. Eight months off Facebook. Other than email, eight months off every social network. Months prior, I’d written a three-quarters completed draft of Ranger Martin and the Zombie Apocalypse. Then I stopped. Cold turkey. For eight months, I didn’t write a word. Anywhere.

[This paragraph is intentionally left blank.]

When I came back, I had so many pent-up ideas that I couldn’t stop writing. The format for the site took an afternoon. It was that quick. This includes coming up with the categories Monday Mayhem, Women Who Wow Wednesday and today’s Freedom Friday. I dusted off my old zombie manuscript and completed it. I quickly started Ranger Martin and the Alien Invasion.

Earlier, I said my family considers me a machine. Well, that’s not too far from the truth. I write every day except Saturday, even when I don’t feel like it. I don’t wait for inspiration because, I suppose, it’s now a habit.

If you’re curious, this is how I do it. I sit. I write.

Pretty simple, huh?

There’s a bit more to it than that, but I write whatever comes to mind. I’ll edit after it’s down on paper. And because I’ve established a two-to-three week buffer before publishing anything, I have a lot of time to think and play with ideas. If I don’t like an idea, I chuck it. In a year, I must have thrown away a dozen posts.

But I must say, hadn’t I taken eight months off before creating this site, I’m sure I would’ve convinced myself I needed inspiration to write. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The bottom line? I don’t talk about writing because I’m too busy writing.

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale October 21.

What about you writers out there—what is it that compels you to write?

Posted in Freedom Friday

The Habit

Posted on by Jack Flacco

Summer’s the perfect time for relaxation. It doesn’t matter if it’s outside in the park or the backyard. There’s always something to learn when easing into a lawn chair and allowing the mind to drift into a different direction.

Trees in our neighborhood
Trees in our neighborhood

I’m writing this Freedom Friday post with the sun in my eyes and the wind in my hair. Once you finish reading it, you’ll know what I mean.

The other day, my wife took me to our backyard and showed me something I hadn’t noticed before. I thought I’d seen everything in my life, but she once again astounded me. A tree, of no certain type, was growing underneath our deck to sprout its leaves through one of the cracks in the floorboards. Like I said, I’d never seen anything like this before and since then it has given me time to pause and reflect.

For a tree to grow under our deck like that, it had to have a seed. Our backyard has a generous helping of vegetation to have produced such a seed. We live in farm country where the woods are mature and the forests are alive. I’ve always been thankful not to live in a neighborhood where everything is flat and brown. The trees abutting our fences soar between sixty to seventy feet into the sky. The tree in the front of our house also towers to a grand sixty-plus feet. Again, I’m thankful I don’t have to look at a scrawny twig when I wake up in the mornings.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about—the seed. That seed had to fly through the air, in between the floorboards and sink below the soil to germinate. Given that under the deck is cool and dark, the seed also needed sunlight, which I might add, could only come from the crack from whence it came. Let’s not forget, it also needed water to nourish it. Again, I’m assuming the crack provided that nourishment.

Tree in our backyard
Tree in our backyard

So, you see, the odds of that seed ever making it as a tree were so against it. Yet, it grew!

Of course, me being the guy who owns the deck, had a problem on my hands. How do I get rid of it? I mean, I appreciated knowing of its resilience, but I just couldn’t have the thing grow and splitting apart my nice deck.

First, I tore apart the lattice under the deck to find the roots. This involved removing nails and producing a whole lotta sweat on a hot summer day. Second, once I found its roots, I had to chip away at it, since it had embedded itself against the foundation post and grew into a knotted mess. Last, when it proved too time consuming to pull at it with ordinary tools, I had to whip out my chainsaw.

You knew this was coming, right? Zombie writer. Tree. Chainsaw. C’mon, you didn’t think I’d pass up an opportunity to use my favorite weapon—I mean tool. To make a long story short, the tree’s gone, left in a yard waste bag by the side of the road.

But there is a moral to this story. I hope you can sit through a minute or so of philosophy.

Just like the seed of a tree, a good habit can grow to become a majestic wonder. It can sprout from within, take root and dominate a person’s life leading to create beautiful music, build a strong home or anything as routine as slipping on a pair of socks. A bad habit can lead to destructive friendships, poor judgment and all sorts of nasty ticks. Whatever the habit is, good or bad, it all starts with a seed.

In the case of the tree under my deck, looking at it from the surface, the tree seemed to be a perfect example of beating all odds to reach the sunlight. Had I left it growing, it would have destroyed the deck. In other words, what sometimes seems too good to be true may be just that. I know I’m speaking in riddles, but this message is for those who have ears. The other part of the equation is the seed grew out of the darkness, which we don’t notice until it’s too late. By that time, it would have already made a mess of things before its branches saw the light of day. Remember, I ultimately had to use a chainsaw to destroy its roots.

To make it even more confusing as to what I’m saying, if the roots set deep enough, habits tend to be hard to break. It’s better replacing a bad habit with a good one than to try to fight it alone.

Okay, enough of the deep talk. Let’s go back out there and enjoy summer!

RANGER MARTIN AND THE ALIEN INVASION, on sale October 21.

What do you think? Is this subject too deep for summer?