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

Chapter 24

This is Chapter 24 of The Best Self-Help is Free, a treatise by Mr. Stolyarov. You can read all chapters of this freely available treatise here.

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.