Countdown to 2016 - Deaddiction

In a way new year is just a logical barrier.  But it helps us to reset and restart few things.
From where I am, I see the new year to be a very long, strong road.  Its empty throughout December. It looks like a manless national highway. 
Generally I start working on new year resolutions 2 months before only so that I know what works and what does not work.
These are the things I did "just like that":
1. Arrest coffee addiction
2. Arrest newspaper addiction
3. Arrest TV watching tendency

What's the significance?

1. Coffee addiction:  This is significant because my teeth were getting yellow.  Just kidding. I started http://Gcoffee.blogspot.com and named it so because I loved Coffee.  Coffee meant a lot of things to me: a great start, a good companion, a celebration of success.  Drinking coffee was a great ritual to me. I wanted to break this, because it became an addiction. I derived a new value for myself that I should never allow anything to bind me.  I instantly declared to my family (who mocked me for having done similar attempts in the past) and am sticking to not-having-coffee.  I replaced coffee with Green Tea. I started becoming obsessed with different flavours of Green Tea. But never an addiction.  At office, I take randomly coffee (yes!), tea and green tea. Because winter is here! But there were days, I don't take any of these.

What did I do next?  I carried this momentum to the next one.

2. Newspaper addiction:  TOI is biggest addiction. I have tried few times to stop getting TOI (I think I would have blogged about it in the past) but I love their format.  Its so addictive, you get glued to the news, even if its not important. It reached a threshold when they give too much importance on the page 1 on a Bangalore adultery-cum-murder story and one more murder story. They were a very detailed coverage that I felt enough is enough.  I applied the stop-coffee-addiction momentum to TOI and replaced it with The Hindu.   Hindu also covers bad news on pg 1, but with their basic format, who cares? Sometimes, I try to recollect what I read as a headline! 

Having got 2 de-addictions, I sometimes felt my limbs were removed (ha..ha). But it helped!

3. TV watching:  This is just a light one.  I don't watch TV generally so much. But that I return home late and start watching the music shows for an hour.  Kids don't get my time and attention. Though its a 30 minute time, I sacrificed it.  Weekends, sometimes I don't even turn off the TV.

De-addiction is almost like de-toxification.  I am feeling free.

Now I know, my mind is templatized for de-addicting anything:

• Toxic relationships
• Tech distractions (did you visualize WhatsApp?)
• Unwanted worries and habits

Weeds are automatic!  They need to be removed first, before you plant anything new. 

I am glad I made good progress and commitment in the last 2 months or so.