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YOUC
Break that Bad Habit!
by
Norman
L.
Shoaf
Are you plagued by a troublesome habit? Do you want to overcome it?
Here's important information you can use!
Y
ou
MAY
have
hea~d
the old
say tng:
" N othing is perma–
nent but change. "
We ll , to a certain
degree that's true.
Change is constantly
tak in g place a ll
around us.
Yet, when it comes
to changing habits–
especially bad ones- it
seems that no struggle
can be more fierce.
Creatures of Habit
Stop and think: Much of what we
do in our everyday lives is, to a
tremendous extent , a matter of
habit.
We eat at certain times. And
the types and amounts of food we
eat are fairly consistent. We sleep,
whether too much, just enough or
too little, at the same times- and
most of us lie in certain positions
when we sleep. We travel to work
or school or the store usually by
way of the same routes. Whe n a
relative, friend or fellow employee
greets us, we most likely respond
in the same certain way.
We humans are, in shor t, crea–
tures of habit.
And that's not bad. W ithout
February 1983
habits, we could hardly function
normally, Jet a lone accomplish
mu
ch .
But unfortunately, we also allow
ourselves to develop bad habits–
unthinking patterns of doing
things the wrong way. Bad habits
can range from stuttering, squint–
ing and nervous twitches to dan–
gerous driving techniques, smoking
and drug abuse. They can ostracize
us socially, overburden us with
guilt and, in the more serious
cases, harm us physically and even
cost us our lives.
These serious, harmful habits–
smoki ng, drug abuse and shoplift–
ing among them- are what the
Bible calls sin-the violation of
God's great law of love ( I John
3:4). And the result of sin is death
(Romans 6:23).
How Hablts
Form
A habit is a
learned patter n
of acting-a way of
behaving that has
become routine.
Matbemat icia ns com–
pa r ing humans to the
computer have calculated
that in an average lifetime
of
70
years, the human
being can take in and
remember about
l 00
bil–
lion bits. A bit is a mea–
sure of information-the
simplest form of data capable of
being stored in a computer.
That enormous number repre–
sents far more information than
even the most advanced computer
can handle.
A computer, when it receives as
much information as ·it can deal
with, simply quits receiving infor–
mat ion. It cannot take in and pro–
cess any more.
The human brain reacts similar–
ly. When it has received as much
information as it can cope with at
once, it "turns off'-stops paying
attention.
But this marvelous mechanism
has the abi lity to receive and store,
in long-term memory, information
about how to perform routine tasks,
and to recall and use that informa-
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