Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I The Sunday Guardian I April 5, 2015

Very often it happens that something people try out turns, if they don't control it, into a habit. If the habit is not stopped, it turns into an addiction. And an addiction very often becomes so deeply engrained that people reach the point of no return, when it becomes practically impossible to cure them of it.

This is the case with every bad habit and addiction. Bad habit is a result of conditioning. When one does something over a period of time, he gets conditioned into doing it. This phenomenon leads to developing of bad habits. When one gets conditioned into a bad habit, one's ability to think against it ceases. One continues to indulge in the bad habit, without stopping to think whether it is right or wrong.

Every person develops certain habits from childhood. Thus, an important task, which every person has to perform, is to think over one's habits. One must continually engage in introspection. In this way one thinks against oneself. One can thus discover one's bad habits and reform one's ways. Otherwise, one would remain steeped in these bad habits and die in this state.

Every person must think about one's bad habits, discover them and get rid of them. That is, one should de-condition one's conditioning. This is a task which a person has to perform on his own, no other person can do it for him. At that very moment, you should introspect, acknowledge your mistake and change your way of behaving. You should not postpone it to tomorrow to make amends for your mistakes. You must make amends not just today, but immediately, right away.

If you fail to immediately correct a wrong way of behaving, it is very possible that you will develop a taste for this behaviour. And then, it may become a habit and then even an incurable addiction.