According to Osho, habits are acquired, not your nature - so they can be dropped, but only easily. Struggling or suppressing simply swaps one habit for another. The key is awareness: understand the root impulse and your clinging, then let go without drama. Don't outsource your conscience to others' advice; see clearly for yourself, and the habit falls away naturally.
Understand why you do it, loosen your grip, and it will fade on its own—fighting it only turns it into something else.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Second question: Osho, can lifelong habits be dropped easily? Mulla Nasruddin and his son jumped across a stream. The old Mulla cleared it; the son fell in midstream. “Papa, this is too much! You’re old and you made it. I thought if you could, I could—and I fell.” Nasruddin laughed: “Son, there’s a secret.” He jingled his pocket—clink, clink. “I don’t understand,” said the son. “Coins must be in the pocket. Then a man can cross not just a stream but the sea. When I leave home I carry cash. It keeps me warm, puts strength in the life-breath. That’s a man’s true soul; no other soul. You jumped soulless—so you fell. Next time put coins in your pocket and see!” Money has a power. Invisible, but potent. Money kills—without killing. So if you escape in one area, the disease will erupt elsewhere.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, OLD HABITS DIE HARD! Prem Harideva, it is true... but why? Why do old habits die hard? -- because you are nothing but your old habits. If they die, YOU will die. You don't have anything more, you don't have anything plus. You are just your old habits, old patterns. You are a mechanism, not yet a man; that's why old habits die hard. It is very rare that a man exists, very few and far between. A Buddha is a real man, authentic. A Zarathustra is a real man -- a man worth calling a man. The ordinary humanity is just robotlike: it lives unconsciously, it lives mechanically. And habits are all that you have. If you drop all your habits you will simply start evaporating; you will not find yourself at all. What are you?
Osho, the samskaras of the previous life become habits in this one. The habits of this life will again become samskaras in the next. Then where is the end?
Yes, preserving yourself, you can play as many games as you like. When the Divine himself is at play, why should you be troubled? But God is the master; and when you too become master of your habits and samskaras, then in your small world you too become divine. Buddha called this “awareness”: do everything, but do it consciously. Even to lift a foot, lift it with awareness. Getting up, sitting down, lying down—with awareness. Do not do anything in a stupor. If you go on cultivating awareness, habits will still form and you will use them, but behind the habit a current of awareness will be flowing. The lamp of consciousness will be burning. That too will be taking shape, its intensity increasing, its light deepening. If in life there remain only habits and more habits, the soul is lost. Be there behind the habits as well—separate, distinct. And…
Osho, I keep turning back to look at the past. It’s futile, yet the habit doesn’t drop. What could be the reason?
Even to a dry tree the vine clings. Support! No other support seems visible. Ahead, only darkness; within, only darkness. The one bright thing seems to be the line of the past along which you have come—this path that is over, that will never be again, that has already happened. You sit arranging these preserved blossoms, these dried flowers. You cling to them. The creeper has twined round a lifeless tree— how much the past coddles the unborn It’s all dead, a corpse. Sometimes it happens: a she-monkey goes on carrying her baby pressed to her chest. Even when the baby dies, she keeps carrying it. It takes days—only when it rots and starts to stink does she drop it in a fright. Otherwise she goes on clutching the corpse—old habit. The past is a corpse—gone, done. Dust. Ash; the ember is out. Don’t keep lying on this ash, don’t…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I ALLOW HABIT TO DOMINATE CONSCIOUSNESS? It is immensely important that you get rid of the bondage of the past. Simultaneously the future also disappears because it was only a projection of past memories -- and you are left only with the present. Consciousness is always of the present. And because you are not in the present, you have to delegate actions to your robot. And mind is a robot. People go on doing things, and doing perfectly well, and that makes them feel as if everything is going right. But every machine does it. It is better to commit a few errors, a few mistakes, but be conscious. Humanity begins when you are finished with habits.