Healthy Swaps

Bad habits are the bi-product of our breakneck, capitalist culture. A truck spits out Co2. We spit out bad habits.

It’s inevitable that our ambition and our hustle lead us to short-term stress-relieving activities like drinking, smoking, biting our nails, gobbling bags of candy, or binge watching a show the night before a project.

In the moment, these bad habits insulate us from the raw, unfiltered stress of life. But when the drowsiness, or the hangover, or the bloody hangnail show up, we get even more stressed than before.

I’ve been experimenting with healthy swaps for my bad habits. I realize that short of becoming a monastic priest, I’m powerless to completely eradicate all my bad habits. When I kick one, another takes its place. Then I kick that one, and a new one comes around.

So here’s where healthy swaps come in: choosing a slightly healthier bad habit in place of the bad bad habit you want to kick.

For example, I’m pretty regimented with my breakfasts. I eat virtually the same thing every day. But some days, I have an intense sugar craving right after my eggs and whole grain toast (probably because I just ate a slab tougher than cardboard). For a while, this meant pouring a fat bowl of my wife’s Reese’s Puffs and scarfing it down. This gave me the sugar I craved, but left me sluggish a half hour later. Now, instead of indulging in 15 grams of sugar, and 250 extra calories, I just have a piece of bubble gum. 2 grams of sugar is better than 15, and it keeps me from all those extra calories.

We’re not infallible. We’re not logical beings. We’re subject to the whims of our human nature, especially when things get hard. Stop holding yourself to a perfect standard and then failing again and again. Instead, try out a well-designed healthy swap of your own.