How to Change a Habit | Original
It is very hard to change a habit. Your brain holds so many memories associated with it. When you want to change it, it can be incredibly difficult.
In my apartment building, when the construction company didn’t provide us with our parking spot, I used the public parking spot on the minus 1 floor. After a year, I was finally able to use our designated parking spot on the minus 2 floor.
So, imagine how many times I went to the minus 1 floor, headed to the parking area, and found that my car wasn’t there.
I had developed a habit. My muscle memory tells me to go to the first floor when I enter the elevator to leave home.
It’s similar with terminology. For example, I always say “oil car” when I should say “gasoline car” to describe them. One has to learn the correct terms from the beginning; that’s the truth. It is very hard to change later.
If there’s something you believe in and follow for years, and then discover you were mistaken, it can be very painful.
Another example is language learning. It is hard to learn English in your 20s or 30s. Because for everything in your memory, the first word that appears in your mind is in your mother tongue language.
Learning something completely new is relatively easy because you have a beginner’s mind. However, trying to change an old habit and improve your existing behavior is much harder.
If you asked me to improve my Chinese writing, I would say it is almost impossible and very painful. But if you asked me to learn to write 500 Japanese words, I would be happy to learn and do so.
This means that for something important and critical, it is better to start early and do it the correct way from the beginning. In the future, it will be much more painful to correct.
It’s similar to health. If we smoke, it may seem fine at first. But if we discover after 10 years that smoking is unhealthy, it becomes very hard to quit.
Later, I changed the title of this essay from “Hard to Change a Habit” to “How to Change a Habit.” After a few days of parking on minus floor 2, I actually adapted to this new habit. In the future, parking on minus floor 2 will save me time, as the parking spots on minus floor 1 can be unstable and my parking spot position changes frequently.
But on minus floor 2, I have a parking spot that belongs to me. So I have a fixed parking spot, and it is close to the door, which helps me get to the elevator quickly.
This means that if the future benefits are significant, we should change our habits. It may be troublesome at first, but it becomes easier in the long term.
One can actually change one’s habits. If they think it is important enough and it is the thing we must do, then we have to change our habits, then we adapt fast. The big obstacle is the willingness. If one don’t want to change the habit, one never try to adapt or change, so it can’t never learn the habit. If one doesn’t want to learn a new word, in mother tone or second langauge, one won’t know that in later life.