Irene is always arguing; she just can’t tolerate any disagreement and goes on until she is convinced that she has won the debate (and lost yet another friend).

Anita just can’t stop gossiping about other people – and people around her have stopped trusting her.

Frank is always broke – he is a compulsive shopper.

We can make the list longer, but they are all victims of bad habits, or shall we say out of control habits. Habits are formed by through repetition; we all know that. We did something, got rewarded, did again, again got rewarded… and here you go – you have just manufactured a habit.

There are brilliant suggestions everywhere on how to break any habit, let us see what is the most basic thing you need to change any habit.

Habit patterns are what keep us tied down to our current situation, good or bad. Key to every change is breaking free of, at least some, habitual activities. Habitual tendencies, likes and dislikes, and preferences and prejudices create an invisible barrier around us that limit our freedom and prevent us from realizing our full potential.

How do we define a habit? The answer involves knowing whether we go about life consciously – with awareness of what we are doing. Being aware or cognizant is what makes us human. Normally we lead life without “knowing” what we are doing – we do thing robotically, as if we are leading a life on autopilot. This is a realistic description of what we call “normal living”.

Awareness Takes You Away from Mental Boundaries

The moment we introduce elements of “consciousness” or mindfulness, we begin to “know” what we are doing. And we are not doing things mechanically anymore. Now we “know” what is going on in the mind and how we are feeling going through the activities. We feel being “here and now”.

It is like “stepping outside the mind” and “watching” what we are doing. We begin to feel being just a “watcher” of activities. This separation of consciousness with self is a common experience of long-term meditators – it transforms him from a “doer” to “watcher”. We feels as if we are living beyond and outside the mind. This gives us freedom to act differently.

In fact, non-directive meditation practices begin with “just watching” (as opposed to concentrative meditational practices). We don’t deliberately focus on anything, but instead, just observe thoughts, feelings, breathing, sensations and everything happening inside. The only effort made is to not identify with anything. No evaluation, no judgment, no preference – just pure detached observation. Ideally, it is a “bare observation” and “mere observation”.

How Development of Awareness Breaks Habits?

With practice, a keen sense of awareness is developed that progressively brings everything under the umbrella of conscious awareness and no action can take place without deliberate mental acknowledgement and permission. Heightened awareness takes us outside the confines of mind. It takes us away from the habit of doing things robotically or mechanically (without “knowing” what we are doing) and we begin to see choices. Along with that comes the freedom to act differently. Now we can choose not to act in certain ways, or to act in ways we decide.

Earlier we knew that we had certain bad habits that we would be better without, but felt helpless and kept repeating the same mistake over and over again. Now, however, with awareness we can exercise a choice – a choice of restrain, for instance. A compulsive shopper can hold himself back if he becomes aware of his thoughts and feelings that force him to shop extravagantly, and a liar can hold back from lying if there were awareness.

Normally people try to analyze the habit they wanted to break – to just think their way out of the habit. Or try to work out a new habit pattern – replacing the old way of reaction with a better or less harmful one. These can at best be important initial steps. However, without the presence of awareness, such attempts are at best quick fix and temporary. Because they are still living inside their minds, tied to its way of thinking, beliefs and acquired behavior patterns.

It should, however, be emphasized that development of awareness doesn’t automatically change habits, but crucially facilitates attempts to change by taking us away from the confines of mental boundaries.

More Resources

Mindfulness – Described in 12 Ways for Beginners
Mindfulness – Did You Really Eat That Apple?