How to get rid of bad habits? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)

Question: I want to get rid of my bad habits. I have tried all the things to get rid of them, but I am still unable to do that. What is the reason?

Speaker: How do you know whether a particular habit is good or bad? How do you decide?

Listener 1: It has been told to us earlier, that what is good and what is bad.

Speaker: You have been told earlier that what is good and what is bad. That is the way we go about deciding everything – what is right, what is wrong, what is fair, what is unfair – on the basis of criteria that has been given to us in advance. That this is good, this is bad.

Once you know, once you really-really know that what is harmful to you, that what will cause suffering to you, will you still go ahead and do it? Once you see the entire cause-effect chain, do you still go ahead and do it? Once you see yourself, not just believe in somebody’s words, not just believe what your parents have told you, or what society has told you, or what religion has told you, once you see it yourself, do you still continue doing it?

For example, my religion tells me that eating non-vegetarian food, eating animal flesh, is bad. I am a ‘Jain’ by religion. So for me, eating meat is bad. But do I really know for myself that what is meat and what is meant by meat consumption? Do I really understand? I don’t understand, but I may still not eat meat. This abstinence from eating meat is purely a habit given by somebody else. Right? But you will call this ‘a good habit’. Hence you have created two words, ‘good habit’ and ‘bad habit’.