Overturning ingrained habits takes time. It is not easy and requires commitment. To make this commitment to ourself, we need to be convinced the habit is not longer working well in our life, and in fact is keeping us back from experiencing deeper happiness. This process is taking good care of ourself. It is sometimes called, “self-compassion,” recognizing through the help of mindfulness our dysfunctional patterns. Mindfulness helps us to look inside repeatedly to identify what is happening in our emotional and cognitive lives. This recognition is crucial. Once we able to recognize our bad habits, we can move forward convincing ourselves that we don’t need them anymore. It is important to notice this process is free of beating ourselves up, free of guilt. This is how we begin overturning our bad habits.
