The Clarity of a Vice-Check

One of my mentors recommends his students do a “vice-check”. In this exercise you pick a vice–like drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, eating sugar, or being excessively busy–and you take a 30 day break from it. His premise is that if you find it seriously difficult to abstain for those 30 days, you may have found a habit that is worth cutting out of your life entirely.

I think it’s an exercise that is very much worth doing. Not because I’m a machochist and love to suffer, but because when you remove a habit from your world that you are dependent on, it may force you to ask why the dependency exists in the first place.

Do you need coffee because you don’t honour your body’s need for sleep? Do you need that glass of wine because you won’t address other problems in your life? Do you need that sugar fix to pick you up in the afternoon because you forgot to eat lunch, or consistently choose unhealthy foods?

Getting rid of coffee or booze for 30 days isn’t going to change your life. But it might allow you to ask the questions that will.