One Way to Undermine a Habit You Consistently Regret
We all have habits we would like to eliminate. They’re usually the ones we’ve been cultivating for years. They provide short-term symptom relief and inadvertently become part of our identities.
I’ve been coaching a client who has a coffee habit like this. She’s not interested in not ever drinking coffee again. She thoroughly enjoys her morning coffee routine. But she regrets the high-calorie coffee drinks she’s gotten into the habit of adding to her afternoons.
She’s relatively new to mindfulness. She told me she enjoyed the exercises she’d tried in the past but finds formal meditation to be very challenging because her mind never stops. She was willing to try any exercises or strategies that might help her resist her mid-afternoon coffee shop compulsion.
After some discussion and brainstorming, we came up with this experiment together.
Coffee Craving A/B Test
Build a pause into the afternoon coffee habit to (1) observe the specific sensations related to the craving and (2) scout for alternative responses to them.
Over the next ten days, alternate these two coffee-craving responses.
A Days (Indulging Mindfully)
When you notice an urge for an afternoon coffee, take two or three minutes to examine the craving closely before deciding what to order.
Acknowledge that you feel tired or experiencing emotional discomfort of some kind and that you deserve to feel comfortable, safe, and energized.
Place your coffee order. It’s okay to change your mind and skip this step after you’ve taken the pause.
Get curious about the blend of relief and regret you feel after finishing your coffee.
B Days (Selecting an Alternative)
When you notice an urge for an afternoon coffee, take two or three minutes to examine the craving closely before exploring an alternative choice.
Instead of telling yourself, “This is what it feels like to deny myself a treat I deserve even though I often regret it,” look for ways to convey to yourself “This is what it feels like to make a conscious choice about a behavior that’s been running on autopilot.”
Get curious about any relief you’re able to generate without coffee and if it feels different with less regret.
Start a list of alternative comfort options to test.
Jot down brief observations of your efforts to undermine a problematic habit.
Be on the lookout for subtle pleasant sensations to practice savoring. Sooner than you might predict, this can start to help offset the strong pull of the immediate gratification we get from unhealthy or unwanted habits.
Remember, becoming more mindful doesn’t mean always being relaxed, calm, at peace, having a quiet mind, and feeling good about how the present feels. It means getting curious about what it feels like to be alive regardless of whatever you happen to be feeling.
Setting limits, establishing healthy habits, and doing things that are good for us can be super uncomfortable. It can feel reassuring to practice embracing the discomfort related to behaviors we don’t regret. Give it more time than you imagine it will take. Let it be an ongoing practice. Celebrate small wins.
Initial results
On the days into this experiment, she observed four things were intensifying her coffee cravings:
Feeling overwhelmed
Feeling fatigued
Wanting to celebrate an accomplishment
Wanting to reward herself for working hard
She was pleasantly surprised to discover how much she enjoyed tea with almond milk as an alternative treat. It had significantly fewer calories, was less expensive, and had no regret. She added this option to the phone app she uses to place her orders. This significantly reduced the time spent deliberating about her choice.
She told me that even though she wasn’t following every A Day with a B Day, she was ordering her usual afternoon coffee drink a third of the time compared to when she started the experiment.
Given how busy she was — understaffed at work during an already stressful time of year — she was surprised by how effective the strategy was going. She was finding it really useful to take the decision-making process off of autopilot.
Leveraging hindsight
Mindfulness isn’t only about paying attention in the present.
Reflection helps us spot ways to tweak our strategies in the future.
Hindsight grows into foresight as we get better at predicting the short and long-term consequences of our habitual actions.
Making mindfulness personal
Do you have a habit behavior that you find yourself frequently regretting?
How could you structure an experiment for alternating your responses to the related craving or trigger?
If you decide to test it out, I’d love to hear about it.
