Habit Formation

All of us want to form good habits in different areas of our life: physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual areas of our life. Habits are learned behaviors. We can cultivate good habits as well as bad habits. We can learn new and good habits and get rid of harmful habits. How can we accomplish this worthy goal?

There are four steps we can take to form good habits: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. Let us take one unwholesome habit that you really want to break.  You go to the kitchen and you see a bag of potato chips. You are not hungry and you know that eating potato chips is not good for your health. But seeing the potato chips (Cue) you feel a strong urge (Craving) for the chips and
automatically or habitually you grab (Response) a handful chips to satisfy(Reward) your craving. You get an instant short- term reward- pleasure of eating the chips. And you pay the price for succumbing to the harmful craving. If you do not take the right steps in time, you will be enslaved by these harmful habits.

So, what do you do? Cue: Make the bag of chips invisible- out of sight, out of mind or get rid of it. Another example. You want to break the habit of overusing your mobile phone because it becomes a distraction every now and then when it buzzes. Keep the phone away from you or out of your reach. When you take this step consistently, you are breaking this wrong habit. Now you are in control of your craving. You are not yielding to it. This is your wise decision, the right
choice. With practice you form a good helpful habit.

Cue is a stimulus that triggers craving. Craving is in the mind. You use mindfulness practice to relate to the cue and let it go without getting attached to it and bound by it. Mindfulness practice provides insight for the problem and helps us change our mindset. We learn how to respond to the cue or the stimulus wisely. This is another step for changing the harmful habit and forming the wholesome habit. When we take the right step we feel good and happy. That is
the Reward. It reinforces the cultivation of good habits.

There is another model for changing our habitual patterns. It is described in the ancient spiritual book the Bhagavad Gita. It is a dialogue between Arjuna, the disciple, shishya, and Sri Krishna the Spiritual teacher, Guru. Arjun asks an important question to Krishna. He said, “ I Know I should not be carried away (response) by the pull of the senses that may lead me on the wrong path and I do not want to do that. What is the force in me that takes me on the harmful or sinful path even against my will?” Shri Krishna tells Arjuna that it is your selfish passion
Kama or desire that takes you away from the right path. That is the enemy , the insatiable fire in the form of desire...Therefore, control your senses in the beginning and slay this sinful destroyer of knowledge and Self-realization.” 

Desire has three houses: senses, mind and intellect. Desire’s favorite house is five senses. Kama or lust is very powerful. Desire for power, pleasure, prestige, and possessions are also very strong. It is the lust for power that in our modern age is much responsible for destruction and misery. We need to recognize when the desire arises and we need to nip it in the bud before it grows bigger and stronger.

Desire’s second house is the mind where it lives. We need to remain awake and aware when the desire arises in our mind. Mindfulness, Meditation and Prayer are very helpful in regulating our harmful desires. 

Kama’s third house is intellect. Intellect is our mental faculty that discerns between right and wrong and helps the mind in making right choices. What desires and thoughts we entertain in our mind is very crucial. As the Gita says, the mind causes bondage or freedom. So how we use our mind is very important. Kathopanishad, the ancient book of spiritual wisdom, offers a holistic model to understand the power of senses and how to to regulate them.

The body is the chariot, the Self as the master of the chariot, the intellect as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins. The senses are the five horses and the paths are sense objects. The person which is united with the body, senses and mind is the enjoyer. One who lacks understanding and has undisciplined mind, has uncontrolled senses which are unmanageable like the vicious horses of a charioteer. But one who possesses the right understanding and has a disciplined mind has senses under control like the good horses of a charioteer.