Breaking habits can be done. It requires time and patience. Some people say it is hard. No one has said that it is impossible. Habits are things we do to occupy pieces of time. Time is permanent. It cannot be added to and it cannot be taken from. Habits must therefore be replaced so that the time they took is used more appropriately. Habits are things we do to protect ourselves. If we are emotionally hurt or stressed then we have learned to respond in a way that appears to protect us. A poor response provides short term comfort and long term pain. There will always be times when we may feel stressed or threatened. We will always need a reaction. Bad habits here cannot be eliminated but must be replaced. This is the secret to breaking habits. Just trying to stop a bad habit works for a short time. It requires a lot of strength. When our strength runs out so does our ability to prevent that habit from recurring. Replacing a habit with something else builds into us a new pattern of behaviour. It too takes strength at the beginning. After a time the old patterns are broken and the new habit patterns begin to replace them. Eventually the new patterns turn into a new habit. The new habit will now be used in place of the old one. The old habit has given way to the new. Habit broken!