How I almost ruined my life...

Bad habits almost ruined my life forever.

Smoking a little more often

Drinking a little more often

Little by little, everything I thought I'd worked hard to achieve

I began to lose it all

My partner

My job

My friends

My aspirations

My will to survive

All because I took my hands off the wheel

Fortunately... Thanks to my family I kept some sanity

Gave myself a slap, and began a long journey

A journey to rid myself of all my nasty habits

All the things which I allowed to weigh me down

And there is a long list

A story for another time

Because today, I'm going to talk about where many fail

I'll share a powerful mental model I used to quit smoking...

A lot of people smoke tobacco.

It still blows my mind that it was legal to smoke aboard an airplane (mid-flight btw)

We've come to understand so much in such a short space of time.

...The horrendous long term effects of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hand smoke

How many people has smoking killed in total?

Allegedly, smoking kills 8 million people per year

A quarter of those deaths are from 2nd hand smoke

I started smoking because I wanted to fit in

Everyone in my family smoked,

Personally, as a young boy, I was never a fan

I would always try to tell my family not to smoke

That it's not good for them

My words fell on deaf ears, and eventually the words failed to leave my lips altogether

I didn't know it at the time, but in my barely pubescent adolescence...

I had given up.

I stopped trying to convince those I loved to stop killing themselves

They weren't even hearing me, never mind listening

It wasn't long before I found a group of peers who were selling cigarettes at the school gates

I knew a couple of them outside of school, it seemed harmless.

Why not try something new, I thought to myself.

Had a couple of puffs on a Mayfair Light and didn’t really feel anything...

Then a few words from a friend:

"You look cool when you smoke"

In that moment, I had my new identity

How stupid must I have been

I became... "A smoker"

I never had to buy any, they were always just available

One of the easiest habit's to start, anyone can do it! *cough*

(No pun intended)

Before long, we found other things to smoke

Cannabis for example

We knew people who sold it

We knew people who wanted to buy it

It became our new job to play the middle-man

And our payment for these services included the materials to roll a "spliff"

As you can tell, this is all getting quite out of hand.

It's insidious

We take our hands off the wheel for just a moment

And our lives change drastically in what feels like mere moments

10 years later, the numbness wore off.

The absence of meaning in my life became unbearable.

I had to find a way out.

A path to meaning.

I put my hands back on the wheel

And steadily began to remove toxic behaviours from my life

But as I said

Smoking was the trickiest habit to kick

Everyone I'd known and loved for the past 20 years of my life

So many of them smoked, and still do today.

The house I grew up in, we all used to smoke inside

So many memories, so many triggers.

What's the answer?

…Now, hands down:

The simplest option is to lose all your friends, and change your whole environment….

Start completely fresh.

I decided against this option... for sentimental reasons.

Searching for another way:

I thought of the all reasons why I wanted to quit smoking.

Health is one thing - we've all seen the "adverts"

Money is another thing - £3000/year on average spent on tobacco per smoker

It stinks, it ruins my skin, I wake up with a foul taste in the mouth, etc.

But still

Now and again, in moments of weakness...

I would find myself with an excuse to get to the store

I would find an excuse to look behind the counter

And the kind cashier would ask "Is there anything else?"

It would be rude to say "no", wouldn't it?

A moment later, I'd leave the store

Open the pack

Light one

Enjoy the first drag

And immediately feel I'd let myself down (and wasted another £15)

One day, I decided to take a strategic approach….

Somehow, somewhere, I got the idea that if I did something 33 times, it would form a habit.

I began to look at this idea from the other side.

What if I actively didn't do something, 33 times?

Could I make "not doing something" a habit?

So I broke down what would lead me to intentionally inhaling tobacco smoke.

I broke it down into the smallest possible actions:

Now this is not an exhaustive list

But it paints a picture

Every point in this list presents a decision

A decision we must make

To pursue one intention, or another.

To smoke or not to smoke

At every point in this list, I could remind myself not to continue

The more points I add to this list, the more opportunities I gave myself to say "no"

From this point onward, the fight became 10x easier

Every time I said chose to move forward with any of these points...

…to choose to smoke…

...I felt like a little bitch...

In most cases, this was enough to deter me from taking another step.

In almost every case, I would never get past the 3rd point.

However, we're not perfect...

If I ever let myself succumb to a point of weakness...

…Even if I got past point 3...

…I would have to make at least another 10 decisions to move forward...

…Toward a goal which I knew is ultimately bad for me.

This became my cheat code

The idea of the smallest possible actions is a fantastic way to stop doing anything

But also works great when you want to start doing something new

By finding the smallest possible action, I remove almost all friction of beginning a task.

Waking up early:

Just bring the sheets down an inch, then another, then another.

Roll a little closer to the end of the bed, get your foot out of bed, then your leg... etc

Writing:

Just open up the plan, type a letter, a word, a line, a paragraph, etc.

Now… I will caveat. This is not the only technique I use for managing myself.

But it has become my bread and butter for creating and shaping my habits.

It's extremely powerful

I am now a non-smoker, I exercise every day, I eat healthy - and I do not know if I'd be able to say the same without this strategy.

To simplify and reiterate:

Each action will be burned into your mind

Whenever your impulses lead you astray, it will become so obvious

Then it’s up to you to snap out of it.

Let this strategy be your uphill battle to continuing bad habits...

...and your downhill slide to beginning good habits