The Best Self-Help is Free: Dropping Bad Habits: Deprivation Versus Substitution

If you have a habit you recognize as dangerous, destructive, or otherwise inconveniencing, how do you drop it? Some, who follow the "no pain, no gain" attitude debunked previously, would suggest that you simply abandon it right away and radically change your life overnight, simply using your willpower to endure the discomforts of doing so and get on with your life. I will refer to this as the deprivation approach, because the person seeking to quit the bad habit tries to deprive himself of the things and activities that underlie the habit.

But this approach is problematic. Every person with a bad habit has reasons for being attached to that habit; it gives him some kind of material or psychic satisfaction. The stronger and thereby the more dangerous the habit, the more satisfaction it must bring to a person practicing it - or else the habit would not have been present. Thus, the worst habits are the most difficult to abandon through sheer willpower and self-denial.

In contrast to the deprivation approach, I offer a much more convenient way of dropping bad habits - the substitution approach. If a damaging habit brings you satisfaction, try to substitute a different habit for it that brings you a similar kind and level of satisfaction without also entailing nearly as much damage.

Here are examples of how the substitution approach might work.

Example 1. A person who seeks to lose weight could shift from drinking calorific "regular" soda to calorie-free "diet" soda. The taste is identical, and the pleasure of drinking soda will be retained, without the ill consequences. Likewise, the person seeking to lose weight can eat sugar-free jam and gelatin snacks instead of the conventional kind, replace fatty meats with lean meats or artificial meats, and substitute calorie-free soy butter spray for actual butter. Not all of these alternatives will give quite the exact satisfaction as the foods they replace, but the satisfaction should be close enough to satisfy anyone who truly wishes to lose weight. The draconian deprivation alternative of giving up entire classes of foods - as suggested by many currently popular diets - would surely be much less pleasant.

Example 2. A person risking his life through "extreme sports" might instead try simulated and even virtual-reality substitutes for those sports. While the technology for replicating experiences in virtual reality is still insufficiently developed to fully substitute for them, it is quickly getting there and will be there within a decade. Then, a much wider array of possible thrills and experiences will be safely available to those who seek them.

Example 3. The nicotine patch works well as a device to help people stop smoking. Instead of just dropping the habit overnight, the smoker uses the patch instead of cigarettes and receives progressively decreasing doses of nicotine until they dwindle to zero and he has thus gently quitted the habit.

Example 4. A person prone to fits of rage or other temperamental outbursts might seek safer outlets for his emotions instead of trying to suppress them. Instead of directly criticizing or insulting other people, he could find more abstract and distant targets for his criticism - such as governments, institutions, textbooks, celebrities, and other entities he will never come into direct contact with or directly offend. Then what would previously have been seen as impolite pestering and trouble-making might become construed by external observers as mere righteous indignation over broader injustices.

Those who are plagued by desires for physical aggression could channel those desires into violent computer games or contact sports, such as boxing, wrestling, and many forms of martial arts, where fighting is ritualized and rendered much safer through the presence of rules and limitations. Then real people would not be hurt in any ways to which they did not consent.

Example 5. A person who has developed habits of sloth and aversion to work could try to find a kind of work that seems entertaining to him or that is integrated into some kind of framework whereby it can be perceived as partially entertaining. He could find some aspect of this work which might be turned into a game, a personal challenge, or a curiosity. He could find some way of measuring his progress that brings him satisfaction and encourages him to make incremental strides forward. His important achievement in pursuing this path will be that he will actually do something productive. That, after all, is the substantive goal - not the suppression of an indulgent, easy-going nature.

Example 6. A person who does not enjoy exercise and finds it tiring or even painful could - instead of simply pushing on - render exercise more pleasant by adding other elements to it. He could, for instance, run or walk with a portable mp3 player so that music or audio lectures might partially distract him from pain and exhaustion. Moreover, he could develop a system for tracking and measuring his progress in terms of distance traveled, time spent, calories burned, or whatever metric might be relevant or appealing to him. Then, each minute he continues to exercise, he will have made some noticeable progress that he can feel justifiably proud about. Thus, he will focus on his pride in his accomplishment instead of the discomfort of the exercise.

Example 7. A person who finds it difficult to learn a particular skill or subject matter might, instead of simply struggling with the given presentation of this material, find a different presentation or a different way of looking at it. If he finds a certain textbook to be difficult to comprehend, he should seek a different one, or - better yet - find free information on the Internet whenever possible. Moreover, instead of conceiving of the learning as a chore or a duty, he could structure it as a game or a challenge, where the object is to obtain and demonstrate the skill set he was seeking to gain in the first place.

The problem with using self-denial to quit bad habits is that the self-denial can only last so long. Without addressing the underlying valuations and motivations of one's actions, one will inevitably revert to the default, baseline state of doing what one desires most - unless one can keep one's desires fulfilled while at the same time minimizing any negative impact those desires might have on oneself or others. The substitution approach enables one to keep one's desires at least partially met by focusing on the essence of what one desires and getting rid of specific harmful manifestations or methods of pursuing those desires.

Read all chapters of The Best Self-Help is Free.