This was my fridge in my freshman dorm room.

It looks terrible, I know.

For most of college and for a lot of high school

I had a terrible addiction to energy drinks and sodas.

Monsters, Red Bulls, Nos's and I knew

it was unhealthy for me.

In fact at one point I remember tweeting out

something about needing help quitting these things

and somebody replied, "Have fun with that irregular

heartbeat in 10 years dude".

That stuck with me.

But not enough for me to quit.

For a long time I would try and fail again and again.

It was always this just one more time excuse

that would come up.

Maybe there was a homework assignment

that I had to do late at night

so I would head to the library cafe

and pick one up and settle in

for a study session.

Or maybe sometimes I'd just go

to the convenience store with my friends

and now they're six inches away

and my willpower failed me.

So long story short, this was one

of my worst habits and it took me years

to finally beat it.

But eventually I did and now it has been

about five years since I have had

any kind of energy drink whatsoever.

I rarely drink regular soda at all as well.

Today guys what I want to talk about

is how to break those bad habits.

Regardless of whatever the habit is,

whether it's drinking one too many sody pops like me

or playing too many video games when

you should be studying or just compulsively

biting your nails, you have the ability

to break those bad habits as long

as you take the challenge seriously.

As Aristotle said over 2,000 years ago

with some admittedly weird grammar

in the English translation, "What it lies

in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do".

But before we dive into the actual tactics

and strategies here, it's useful

to ask the question, what exactly is a bad habit.

In Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit,

he defines a habit in general as

an ingrained pattern of behavior that has three stages.

There is the cue, whatever triggers the habit in your mind.

The routine, the pattern of behavior,

the actions that you take to get the reward,

the final part.

He also mentions that once a habit

becomes truly, deeply rooted and ingrained,

you've gone through it several times,

a fourth component also comes into the equation

and that's craving.

When the cue is triggered in your mind

there is an intense craving for that reward.

It's important to understand this.

Every habit has a reward.

Otherwise you wouldn't do it.

Essentially a bad habit is really

any habit that stands in opposition

to your long term goals, be it living

a healthy life, or maintaining good relationships,

or earning straight A's.

The reason that these bad habits stick around

for so long is because they are ingrained

but almost always they are habits

that lead to short term rewards.

Your brain is hard wired to care a lot

more about the short term than your long term goals

even though logically you know those long term goals

are more important.

Essentially you're acting against

your own self interests.

In fact there's a term that originates

in ancient Greece for this called akraisia.

If you want to be able to beat that akraisia,

if you want to be able to beat that short term focused

programming deep inside your brain,

you need to have a clear, well-defined

and compelling reason for breaking that bad habit.

In one of his private journals Bruce Lee once wrote,

"I realize the dominating thoughts of my mind

will eventually reproduce themselves

in outward, physical action, and gradually transform

themselves into physical reality,

therefore I will concentrate my thoughts

for 30 minutes daily upon the task

of thinking of the person I intend to become,

thereby creating in my mind a clear mental picture".

For Bruce Lee that compelling reason,

that motivation came through intense meditation

and visualization.

But you can also create a real physical reminder

of why you're trying to break that habit as well.

That's actually what I did.

Out of all the reasons I had for stopping my addiction

to energy drinks, the main one was my face.

Because for most of high school

and for a lot of college I had horrible acne.

My complexion was basically the dark side of the moon

and it wrecked my self confidence.

It was bad enough that I would wake up pretty much

every day with blood stains on my pillow case and my sheets.

I really wanted to fix this problem.

I would spend hours researching online,

trying to find remedies and fixes

and trying to figure out what the causes were

but eventually I realized what I

had basically known all along,

which is that sugar, especially sugary energy drinks

and soda, were a huge cause of break outs.

One day I decided to crystallize this reason

in physical form.

I actually went into Photoshop.

I took a picture of myself

and I used the clone tool to create

a Photoshopped version of that picture.

Basically an idealized version

of what I wanted to look like some day.

I put that on my phone and every time

I would get a craving to go buy a Monster

or buy a Red Bull, I would look at that picture

and I knew if I gave into that craving

I was pushing that reality further and further

into the future.

That did help immensely, but of course

it was still tough to resist those cravings.

One additional thing that really helped me

to stave them off was actually replacing

energy drinks and soda with something different

that still gave me a very similar reward.

That's actually the second tip here.

If you can find a different routine

that replaces the reward with something similar

then you can replace the habit

with something more productive.

This is actually something Charles Duhigg

talks about in the Power of Habit.

For me, I replaced my energy drink addiction

and my soda addiction in part with sparkling drinks

La Croix, Topo Chico, San Pellegreno,

because I realized it wasn't necessarily

the taste of the drinks that I was addicted to,

it wasn't even necessarily the caffeine,

it was just the novelty of having

that cool can on the desk and having

some good tasting drink while I did

my boring homework.

I asked myself, is there something else

where I can get a similar, if not exact same benefit.

When my girlfriend actually introduced me

to La Croix, which is like a lemon flavored one,

I was like this doesn't taste the same,

but it's carbonated, it's in a can,

it's got a bit of novelty to it,

so it kind of replaced soda in that habit.

My experience is actually pretty similar

to the author The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg,

because at one point he found himself

in a bad habit where he would go every single day

and buy a cookie.

He asked himself, this is not healthy for me,

why am I doing this.

Is it because it tastes good?

Is it because I need the sugar

because it's the afternoon?

Or is it something else?

Eventually he realized the real reason

that he was getting up every single day,

leaving his desk and going to buy a cookie,

is that it gave him an excuse to take

a bit of a break and socialize with his coworkers.

That was really the reward.

Sometimes you have to dig in to figure out

what's the actual reward I'm getting

from this habit and are there several rewards

and if so, is there a primary one

that I can find a way to replace

with a healthier behavior.

Another crucial step you need to take

from breaking a bad habit is to remove

as much access to that habit as you possibly can.

In The Odyssey when Odysseus and his men

are sailing past the island of the sirens

he actually has his men bind him to the ship's mast

with ropes and then put bees wax in their own ears,

that way they can't hear the sirens song

at all and he can still hear to navigate the ship,

but he won't be able to give in to the temptation.

Because Odysseus knew when he was removed

from that temptation, he was able to think rationally

and logically and he had enough willpower

to set up a pre commitment which made it so

that when his willpower failed in the face of temptation,

he was unable to give in to it anyway.

Use this tactic when you're trying

to break your own bad habits.

I do this as well.

I actually have a pretty bad habit

of looking at analytics on Youtube

or social media sites like Twitter or Facebook

when I should be writing.

I actually have a program that completely blocks

all access to those sites basically binding

me to doing my writing and making

it completely impossible for me

to go distract myself.

Essentially if I have no access

to that habit, I'm not going to be

able to give in to it.

Lastly, if you find the prospect of going completely

cold turkey and quitting your bad habit forever daunting,

try a 30 day challenge.

I find this to be useful because a lot

of people can't moderate their bad habits.

They can't say I'm just gonna do this

every once in awhile as a treat.

They have to give it up.

But, thinking about giving it up forever,

especially when it's a fun habit like playing video games

or having the occasional soda is kind of daunting,

it kind of sucks.

But, anybody and I mean anybody,

can do a 30 day challenge.

Abstaining from that thing for just 30 days.

The way that I do this is I create a Google sheet

and I give the URL to my friend Martin.

Everyday I will go in, I will log my progress

and I tell him, check on my progress

and if I fail even once, I'm gonna give you $100.

I don't want to fail, it will hurt my pride,

it will hurt my wallet and I know

I've got somebody invested in my success

who is gonna keep me accountable.

Hey, it's just for 30 days.

Again, anybody can do it.

All right, so quick recap here.

If you want to break a bad habit,

number one, have a compelling, crystallized,

well defined reason in your mind

for why you want to break it and try

to create a physical reminder of that reason.

Number two, what was number two? (laughing)

I don't know what it was.

Number two, identify the reward

and try to replace the routine

with something that gives you a similar reward.

Also remove as much access to that habit