Have you tried to quit drinking pop over and over only to cave in and start drinking it again? Me too.
In this post I’ll share my story how I "hacked" my psychology with a 2 liter bottle of soda, a soda substitute, and some common office supplies.
Breaking the Soda Habit
The trick to breaking your soda habit lies within Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and the rider from his book The Happiness Hypothesis.
As human beings, our willpower is limited and to demonstrate this concept, Haidt uses the metaphor of someone riding an elephant. The rider (our logical self) can only control the elephant (our emotional self) for so long before the elephant overpowers the rider and gets its way.
This is why its essential to use recognize and take advantage of our psychological weaknesses so that we can make our elephants more docile for the riders.
Substituting Soda for Another Drink
Completely changing our drinking behaviors is harder than just changing from an unhealthy drink to a healthy (or healthier) drink because it requires morre willpower. To make quitting soda easier, we’ll replace just the soda rather than the entire behavior because it will conserve our willpower.
If you drink caffeinated soda, you’ll need an alternative source of caffeine like coffee, tea, or a caffeine supplement. Caffeine is addictive and, if you want to quit caffeine, that’s a whole ’nother post.
Your Soda Alternative Should be as Convenient as Drinking Soda
I drank straight from 2 liter bottles, so I needed a convenient drink of the same size. If you’re not as extreme as I was, your soda alternative might be as simple as bottled water, seltzer water, a cup of coffee, or a cup of tea.
I tried cups of tea and cups of coffee but the brew/steeping time took too long and was too much of a hassle. The Nalgene bottles and other large reusable bottles for water were too inconvenient to clean or drink from. I’m not the only one who always drips water on myself when drinking from one of these, am I?
My solution was refilling empty 2 liter soda bottles and 1 gallon water bottles. Sometimes I’d steep tea in the bottles and add a little lemon juice. 2 liter bottles of seltzer water also helped if I craved the bubbly feeling.
The Psychological Hack to Deal with Soda Cravings
When I quit drinking soda, I had a single two liter bottle of Diet Mountain Dew Remaining. I thought of throwing it out or giving it away but instead I kept it on my desk in plain sight so I would always see it.
I wrote on an index card in sharpie “I can have this but I don’t want it” and I included the date and time that I officially quit underneath.
Every time I had a craving for soda, I would read the index card aloud to myself as many times as I felt necessary and I would drink water or tea from my bottle (pictured on the left) instead.
The language was essential because rather than focusing on a negative, such as “I can’t have this,” I emphasized that I had a choice in the matter and I was constantly making the right choice which made me feel good.
This tactic capitalizes on the framing effect.
In my darkest hours where I said “screw it” to myself and had decided I was just going to drink the two liter, I didn’t.
The date stopped me.
Having the date and time on the bottle saved me from giving up because it reminded me how long I had been perfectly successful at quitting soda and it also reminded me that if I drank the soda I would lose my progress.
This effect helped me to exercise my willpower. The best part about this psychological trick was that it became more powerful as time went on.
Wrapping up
To conclude, the index card and positive framing are psychological tools to empower the rider, our logical self. By using a good, convenient substitute for soda we only have to slightly change the course of the elephant (our emotional self). This makes quitting soda a lot easier than trying to just stop cold turkey.
I hope my experience helps you quit too!
Feature photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels
