Taking Breaks Can Help You Change Your Habits

Many people anticipate quitting their worst habit with a sense of dread. They worry they won’t survive without it. They imagine years (or days) into the future and wonder how they’ll fill the spaces created by its absence. And the more they think about quitting, the more their resistance grows.

They worry they’ll never be the same again. That they’ll lose their essence. Their spark. The thing that makes them them. They begin to focus on all the reasons this is not the right time.

And, slowly, but surely, they talk themselves out of quitting and back into the comfort zone of their habit. Even if it’s killing them. I know. It took me 30 years to stop smoking cigarettes.

Why quitting isn’t always the best idea

Back when I was in my late twenties, whenever I thought about stopping for good, I experienced a rising panic.

I wondered:

How will I relax,

write,

think,

let loose?

Smoking was, after all, my best friend. My constant companion. My go-to for…everything.

Yet even though I felt like I couldn’t live without it, I wanted to stop smoking more than anything else in the world. Quitting was always on my mind. In fact, I rarely bought a carton of cigarettes because each pack was going to be my last.

Unfortunately, the more often I tried to quit, the less I believed I could, because I always failed. And the more I failed, the less I liked myself.

Over the years, my fear of quitting grew so intense that I finally embraced my identity as a smoker. I started saying things like, “I just really like smoking, and “It’s just who I am!”

At one point, I imagined myself, in some distant future, hooked up to an oxygen tank, a cigarette still smouldering away in my right hand, and shrugged. I’m pretty sure I joked about it with friends.

Clearly, somewhere along the way, I had given up.

That’s what happens when effort becomes wrapped in fear. The unconscious mind pushes back. It digs in its heels, and says, “No!”

And the harder we try, the harder our mind hangs on to the very thing we wish to release. After all, it’s just protecting us in the best way it knows how.

Unfortunately, the best way it knows how IS the habit — the whatever-we-did-that-helped-us-cope-in-the-first-place and then repeated again and again until it was hardwired into our sense of self and became the brain’s immediate solution to…everything.

Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So, how do we stop the insanity? We have to stop doing the same thing over and over again. We must change tactics. Zig when the unconscious mind expects us to zag. Get wily.

Lucky for me, I had another habit I also wanted to ditch. It was alcohol, my second best friend.

How I outwitted my subconscious mind

Long before people talked about Dry Januaries or Sober Octobers, my mother suggested I try taking a break from drinking alcohol. Not quit. Just take a break.

It was December, and I’d been complaining about how tired I was of all the pre-holiday parties.

As a high school English teacher, I was knee deep into correcting my senior class essays and worried about meeting the end of semester crunch that would come with the exam period in January.

She suggested I wait until after New Year’s, and then take a month off booze.

Not quit.

Just take a breather.

And guess what?

I listened to my mother’s advice, and for the first time in my life, I consciously decided to take a break from a habit — not quit — just give it a rest.

That conscious break was pivotal in allowing my brain to reboot. During that pause, I felt like I was on a paid retreat. I wrote, I read. I drank herbal teas. I took bubble baths. I lit candles. I listened to music.

The best part? Even though I was back at work and smack dab in the middle of the most stressful time of the semester, I felt like I was still on holiday. I began cultivating new, healthier habits, and rediscovering old ones I’d forgotten were options. I gathered everything I loved around me. I rested, and relaxed. I created sleep rituals and put myself to bed. I grew quiet and still. I read each night before I went to sleep.

Eventually, I noticed something else was happening. I noticed I wasn’t just alcohol free, but that I was also smoking less. And something changed about the way I viewed quitting. I began to look forward to the day I would never drink again. I began to long, without fear, for the moment I would be free of smoking forever. I began thinking of quitting both habits as an opportunity to find my way back to me — the me that existed before I ever held a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other.

And, yes, I did all this while experiencing the end of semester pressures of grading papers and tallying marks.

The long term effects of taking that break

After that first holiday from a habit, I took many, many others. Sometimes it was from smoking, sometimes from drinking. Sometimes, I took refuge from both at the same time.

Some breaks lasted 10 months, some two, some only a few weeks, a few days, or a few minutes. The longest lasted close to two years.

Every break taught me something new about myself and my habits.

I learned that I’d mistakenly thought cigarettes relaxed me. That alcohol, especially the morning after, caused me a lot of anxiety. I learned I could do nothing but rest and still be okay. In fact, I learned that I could be more than okay. I could be terrific.

Ultimately, I discovered I could relax, write, think and let loose without cigarettes and alcohol. I realized it was okay if I was never the same again. Being the same with those habits wasn’t really me, after all. On those breaks, I believe I found my true essence. I regained my spark. I took back all the things that truly made me me.

As I mentioned earlier, I finally freed myself from smoking for good after 30 years of trying. In fact, I released myself from drinking and smoking, at the same time, 15 years ago.

I couldn’t have done that without taking all those breaks. Those moments of respite and rest helped me fall in love with myself again and remember who I was before those habits took hold.