You have to constantly weight the pros and cons of continuing to do what you are doing, and changing. Sometimes you might “think” it would be great if only you could change a bad habit, but when you get right down to it, changing that habit, might end up being a worse decision for you. There are always some kind of benefits to continuing a bad habit.
Examples:
Hanging with the wrong people. If you drop these people, who you probably like and have a lot of things in common with and have known for years, you will miss them and have to try to find new friends that accept you (and that might not happen). If you don’t drop these people and find better friends, you will likely continue to do a lot of things that are not helpful to your success in life and may not be in your best interest.
Drinking. If you stop drinking, you’ll probably have withdrawal symptoms and you’ll probably have to go into a program like AA to help you stay off the sauce (best case scenario) or go into some type of re-hab and therapy (worst case scenario) and you’ll have to change the way you go about your social life, family encounters and other interactions that might involve alcohol being served. If you don’t stop drinking, you are likely to become ill sometime down the line, and are more likely to die an early death (from disease or accident) and some people, that might be potentially great friends or mates for you, might avoid you, because they perceive you as a drunk or an alcoholic.
So everything that we do in life, always has to be weighed with the alternative. Usually when the bad alternative jumps up and bites you in the arse, that’s how you become motivated to change. If you never get bitten, you are not likely to change your ways.
You don’t always have to hit rock bottom to be “bitten”. Sometimes the motivators come in more subtle packages. Like having your child tell you that they are afraid that you will die if you keep smoking. Or having a friend get into a drunken driving accident (and realizing that it could have been you) Or seeing a relative, who came from meager means, make something of his life because he avoided hanging with the “wrong crowd” and “partying” and instead chose to focus on his education and choosing good mentors. Or hearing a lecture by a teenager who lost his best friend due to his friend’s wreckless driving practices.