Until recently I had never heard the story of heroin addiction with service members in Vietnam. I learned about it from James Clear's book "Atomic Habits".
Two politicians visited Vietnam to see the troops and learned that there was rampant heroin use going on. An investigation found that 20% of all service members in Vietnam were heroin addicts.
That is a crazy stat! Obviously the politicians were shocked and set into motion a plan to track and help rehab the troops when they got home.
If you know anything about heroin addiction, they were facing a grim and thankless task. Heroin is one of the hardest drugs to quit.
But what ended up happening was shocking. In the end, about 9 out of 10 service members previously addicted to heroin were able to break their addiction.
How is that possible?
If you want to change your behavior, you have to change your environment.
These soldiers were under the constant stress of war, they were around the same group of guys who were also addicted to heroin, these guys shared a deep bond, and heroin was easily accessible. This all created a recipe for disaster.
But when they came home all of these triggers went away. When they were no longer around the triggers, they got out of the routine of using heroin, and that got them away from the habit of using.
So why is that relevant for you? It means you're not weak. It does not mean you're not disciplined. And it does not mean you "don't want it bad enough" when you aren't able to start or stop doing something.
You don't need to discipline yourself, you need to discipline your environment.
Where do you find yourself constantly getting tripped up?
Some examples could be:
-Keeping junk food n the house that you eventually give in to (quit buying that stuff and keeping it in the house!)
-Every time you have a certain amount of drinks you want to smoke (know your limit and stick to it)
-You stay on social media too long and end up feeling rushed with no time to get everything done (put limits on social media on your phone)
-You stay up too late watching Netflix in bed and feel exhausted the next day (keep the electronics out of the bedroom)
Those are just some examples, but think about what slows you down the most and start taking steps to fix it.