Tips On Breaking Bad Habits
Bad habits have proven to be no good because though they may present brief rewards, they are often accompanied by significant long-term consequences. These habits have the ability to jeopardize your mental and physical health, emotions, etc.
In response to boredom, stress, and other factors, we develop patterns or routines that make us feel better temporarily or provide some other short-term reward. Regardless, they never solve the root cause of the problem but rather delay us from taking appropriate action that could actually solve that problem.
How Are Bad Habits Formed?
Negative habits are developed by a chain reaction involving three major components. They are the Triggers, the Routine, and the Reward.
- The ‘Triggers’ (these are the factors that prompt the habit)
- The ‘Routine’ (this is the act of performing the habit repeatedly)
- The ‘Reward’ (this is the benefits associated with the habit)
For instance, if you have a habit of taking excess ice cream right after work. Your habit loop can be similar to this:
- Your Trigger (stress from a hard day’s work)
- Your Routine (overeating ice cream)
- Your Reward (temporary relief from the stress)
Every time you repeat this pattern, it becomes more embedded in your sub-consciousness until it becomes a habit. Over time, your brain holds on to these routines, and they become difficult to unlearn or let go. However, since we learn habits, we can also just as quickly unlearn them if we do it correctly.
This post will be helpful if:
- You a habit that you want to get rid of
- You want to change your response to stress triggers
- You want to achieve more positive, long-term rewards without repercussions
How to Deal with Bad Habits
First, whether good or bad, habits are not eliminated—they are replaced. Habits help us to live organized lives. And, whether good or bad, each one provides its unique benefits. Negative habits often have short-term benefits and more enormous consequences. Whereas, good habits may not reward immediately, but with time, they produce more valuable and long-lasting rewards.
Habits can make or break you in many ways. In some instances, it can be health-related. For example, eating healthy, smoking, doing drugs, etc. It can also be emotional or psychological. Bad habits are formed as coping mechanisms for stress. Hence, to deal with the habit, what we really need to do is change the coping mechanism.
Eliminating negative habits without replacing them will leave your needs in several areas unmet. Rather, you should strive to replace negative habits with good ones that still cater to those needs and provide valuable long-term results.
How to Break Bad Habits
Here are some useful tips for breaking free from bad habits and replacing them with positive habits that provide more long-term rewards.
Make a suitable replacement to substitute the bad habit
This involves planning and coming up with a suitable strategy to respond to the stress triggers that prompt your bad habits. For instance, you may have a habit of sleeping during work hours. How can you curb this habit and stay productive during work hours? Similarly, you may have a habit of smoking. What can you do in place of smoking?
After identifying a negative habit, the next step is to come up with a counter-strategy. Let’s use previous examples:
- For sleeping at work, you can get up and walk around your office whenever you are faced with the urge to sleep. Also, you can walk over to the restroom and wash your face—or you could come up with some other brilliant idea.
- For a bad smoking habit, you can try breathing exercises.
Reduce your list of triggers
You need to cut down on the number of stress triggers that prompt your bad habits. For instance, if drinking makes you smoke, stay clear of the bar. Are you addicted to watching endless TV at hours when you actually should be engaging in more productive activities? Do not subscribe to cable. This way, the trigger will be less since you have no access to TV channels. You need to intentional about cutting down your triggers.
Get an Accountability Partner
Teamwork is a great way to break away from bad habits quickly. An accountability partner can always check up on your progress. For instance, if you want to go on a diet or quit smoking, having an accountability partner can make you actualize your goals more rapidly.
Surround yourself with like-minded people
If you have old friends who encourage certain habits you’re trying to get rid of, you need to lose them. Surround yourself with people who exemplify the habits you are trying to build. These people will provide you daily with a great deal of motivation.
Also, join communities and social media groups that encourage your goals or make new friends. Maybe your progress would attract your old friends to change their habits.
Start with the mind and motive
Remember, habits, whether good or bad, are NOT inborn. You develop them gradually and consistently. Many times people look at breaking bad habits as trying to become a ‘brand new’ person. Whereas, what you’re really doing is unlearning the behavioral patterns that you had learned and adapted to overtime.
In truth, you already have it in you to function optimally without those bad habits since you were already a sound individual before them. You can actually live and work flawlessly without these bad habits because you’ve done it before!
Even if it may have been several years ago, you have once lived without certain habits. And yes, you can most definitely do it again.
Daily affirm yourself and seek positive inspiration
Encourage yourself daily with positive affirmations. You can draw inspiration from members of your community and testimonies from other people who have succeeded previously.
If your goal is to shed some weight, but you haven’t achieved your ideal size. You can say, I know I haven’t gotten my ideal shape. BUT I am working towards it diligently, and in few months, I will actualize it!
This strategy works just as effectively with any other goal you may have set for yourself. For instance, “I tried, and I failed this time, BUT, I will try again because I am closer now to succeeding!” Never back down on your goals. The smallest changes in habits, coupled with consistency, often produce the most remarkable results.
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