You are right. On the flipside however this can lead to fatalism of the "if I can't change anything why even bother"-kind.
If you want to form a habit of doing sports for example, it certainly makes a difference whether you see yourself as a unsporty lazy-ass that will never achieve anything, or whether you see yourself as a unsporty person still looking for a way to get into this and make it part of your life.
What I think is important is to break habits out of band. If you are eating unhealthy or too much a good starting point is to limit your food ordering, cook yourself more. And then you can control what you can cook by buying the right things in the right amount. Ideally you don't go grocery shopping hungry then.
So make following your habit the thing that requires extra steps and is complicated, while the better alternative should be easy, available and fill you with some sort of joy. For me jogging became about listening to new music albums or my favourite podcast while exploring new parts of town. So instead of just moving my body, the sports part was actually just a nice side effect to an activity I actively enjoyed.
Sure, depending on your condition, such simple tricks might not work for everybody, but my point is: The mind is powerful. It tricks you into many bad habits, it can also trick you into the good ones if you wield it the right way.
Raw willpower alone will not help you, you also need to identify patterns and avoid creating situations where you fall back, depending on your situation this might mean even things like totally restructuring your life, cutting off contact, moving somewhere else, etc.
If you want to form a habit of doing sports for example, it certainly makes a difference whether you see yourself as a unsporty lazy-ass that will never achieve anything, or whether you see yourself as a unsporty person still looking for a way to get into this and make it part of your life.
What I think is important is to break habits out of band. If you are eating unhealthy or too much a good starting point is to limit your food ordering, cook yourself more. And then you can control what you can cook by buying the right things in the right amount. Ideally you don't go grocery shopping hungry then.
So make following your habit the thing that requires extra steps and is complicated, while the better alternative should be easy, available and fill you with some sort of joy. For me jogging became about listening to new music albums or my favourite podcast while exploring new parts of town. So instead of just moving my body, the sports part was actually just a nice side effect to an activity I actively enjoyed.
Sure, depending on your condition, such simple tricks might not work for everybody, but my point is: The mind is powerful. It tricks you into many bad habits, it can also trick you into the good ones if you wield it the right way.
Raw willpower alone will not help you, you also need to identify patterns and avoid creating situations where you fall back, depending on your situation this might mean even things like totally restructuring your life, cutting off contact, moving somewhere else, etc.