Four weeks back, it was around very early morning at 3 AM. I got up and wanted to have a coffee. My brain was craving coffee, and I was very desperate to prepare one. Then I had opened my fridge and looking for milk, and I could not find the milk required for one cup of coffee. I had to wait for the milkman to deliver the milk late in the morning to have a cup of coffee. During this time, my brain started exploding, and that is when I had realised that I am a serious coffee addict. I did not think that not having a coffee would make me this sad and feeling inner pain. Hence, I started creating a strategy to stop the coffee altogether and regain my brain back. This article will cover three simple things to stop addiction and generate bulldozer will power and reclaim your brain territory.
1.Deciding and taking that one decision
2.Frequency chart of addiction
3.Stay away from perfectionism
Let’s go through the article.
Deciding and taking that one decision
When I had struggled for not having coffee, I stepped out for a couple of mins. I had given myself to think about the state that I was in. When we go through coffee addiction, we can only think about the current moment and no past and future. The addiction overtakes our ability to think. But at the same time, there is another resistance asking as the reason we feel this way. The moment we question ourselves, we should not lose that one opportunity and that moment to make a decisive decision. I had to decide to stop coffee for the next four weeks to see my self and reclaim my brain. Please remember that I am not taking this decision for life long. All I did was that I decided to stop the coffee temporarily so that my mind is willing to take this at the subconscious level and accepting the proposal. Now, Let’s go through the second part of the article.
Frequency chart of addiction
Week 1: I had created a simple one by one matrix with the next four weeks day and date vs. Stop Coffee and allow the space for a simple nice tick mark. For the first week, I stopped coffee only in the evening. Rather than focusing on altogether preventing the coffee, I had concentrated on reducing it bit by bit. Every night I told myself the next morning, I will have one coffee, and felt great about the next day.
Week 2: I did continue with the same approach, but I stopped coffee on alternate days. I would take coffee on Monday; Stop on Tuesday; again try on Wednesday, and so on. This time of the week, the problem started, and now I used to get severe headaches and mood swings, angry, etc., so I thought of not becoming perfect and had one cup of coffee one day when I had a massive headache.
Week 3: Now, I used to have coffee one day one time in the morning on Monday, and I would skip on the next two days and again have coffee on Thursday and Sunday morning. The midweek Wednesday, I had a headache, so I had to drink coffee.
Week 4: This week, I associated all the headaches with coffee and started believing the coffee addiction had created all those terrible headaches. All those crappy headaches were because of coffee withdrawal symptoms, so I associated the existing pleasure of drinking coffee with the pain of having headaches. This association allowed me to stop the coffee completely, and I don’t drink the coffee anymore. Now, Let’s go through the third part of the article.
Let’s Stay away from perfectionism.
When we wanted to stop an addiction, often, we don’t share it with anyone. But when we share it with family and friends, we would get more support than ever. When I had severe headaches, my family recommended me to have a cup of coffee. I had listened to them and had a coffee with them. But after two times, I had felt that I had overcome the coffee addiction with their support. I could not have come out of this addiction If I had not listened to my family for their recommendation on taking one coffee. So when we wanted to come out of addiction habits, we need family support, and we no need to think about being a hero and becoming perfect. Several drops of rainwater make a river, a similar way, several aspects of sharing allow us to become a powerful, caring human being. Let’s go through the summary of this article.
Summary:
Often adding a bad habit s part of our life is easy. But removing a bad habit requires enormous will power, family, and friends support. When you set out a limitation for yourself, you excel in all the aspects. The less is more. When I wanted to quit coffee, I had to make a tough decision, stick with it, and create a frequency matrix with tick marks to motivate myself. I wanted to stay away to become a perfect creature since I don’t believe in perfectionism but improvisation. You can overcome any habit addiction provided you decide and decide for a short period and try it.