How to Break a Bad Habit and Replace It With a Good One
Bad habits affect your health and prevent you from achieving your goals. They endanger your health — mentally and physically. And they waste your time and energy.
Now, why are we still doing it? And most importantly, is there anything you can do about it?
How can you break free from your bad habits and stick to what is good instead?
I don’t have all the answers, but keep reading and I will share what I learned about how to break free from bad habits.
What causes bad habits?
Most of your bad habits are caused by two things…
Depression and boredom.
Often, bad habits are just one way to cope with stress and loneliness. Everything from straightening your nails to excessive shopping to drinking every weekend to spending time online can be an easy answer to stress and boredom.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can teach them new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom, which you can replace with your bad habits.
Of course, sometimes the pressure or frustration that comes with it is actually the result of serious problems. These problems can be hard to imagine, but if you are determined to make changes, you must be honest with yourself.
Are there specific beliefs or causes that lead to bad habits? Is there something deep inside you — fear, event, or belief — that is holding you back from doing something wrong?
Identifying the causes of your bad habits is important to overcome them.
You do not end a bad habit, you replace it.
All the habits you have right now — good or bad — are in your life for a reason. Somehow, this behavior gives you an advantage, even if it is bad for you in some ways.
Sometimes profits are as natural as smoking or drugs. Sometimes it is as emotional as it is when you are in a bad relationship. And in many cases, your bad habit is a simple way to deal with stress. For example, biting your nails, pulling your hair, touching your foot, or tightening your jaw.
These “benefits” or reasons extend to lesser bad habits.
For example, opening your email inbox as soon as you turn on your computer can make you feel connected. Simultaneously looking at all those emails destroys your product, distracts you, and overwhelms you. However, it prevents you from feeling like you are “missing out”… so you do it again.
Because bad habits offer some kind of benefit to your life, it is extremely difficult to break free. (That’s why simple tips like “just stop doing it” rarely work.)
Instead, you need to replace the bad habit with a new one that offers the same benefits.
For example, if you smoke when you are depressed, it means that it is not a bad idea to “just quit smoking” if that happens. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and instill that new personality instead of smoking.
In other words, bad habits meet certain needs in your life. And for this reason, it is best to replace your bad habits with healthy habits that address this need. If you expect him to cut out bad habits without replacing them, then you will have certain needs that cannot be met and it will be difficult to stick to a “no” practice for a long time.
How can you break a bad habit?
Here are some additional ideas to break your bad habits and think about the process in a new way.
Choose the location of your bad habit. You need to plan ahead for how you will respond if you are faced with stress or boredom that promotes your bad habit. What will you do if you have the urge to smoke? (Example: breathing tests instead.) What will you do when Facebook calls you to postpone it? (Example: write one sentence about a task.) Whatever it is and whatever you are going through, you will need to have a plan for what you will do instead of your bad habit.
Cut out as many causes as you can. If you smoke while drinking, don’t go to the bar. If you eat cookies in the house, then discard them all. If the first thing you do when you sit on the couch takes a TV remote, then hide the remote in a cupboard in a separate room. Make it easier for you to break free from bad habits by avoiding the things that cause them.
Right now, your nature makes your bad habit easier and good habits make it harder. Change your environment and you can change the result.
Join forces with someone else. How often do you try to eat in private? Or maybe you quit “smoking”… but kept that to yourself? (That way no one will see you fail, will they?)
Instead, meet the other person and leave together. The two of you can treat each other responsibly and celebrate your victory together. Knowing that someone expects you to be better is a powerful motivator.
Surround yourself with people who live the way you want to live. You do not have to throw away your old friends, but do not underestimate the power of new ones.
Picture yourself succeeding. Imagine throwing a cigarette or buying a healthy meal or getting up in the morning. Whatever bad habits you want to get rid of, imagine yourself smiling, smiling, and enjoying your success. See yourself building a new personality.
You don’t need to be someone else, you just need a creative return. We often think that to stop bad habits, we need to be completely new. The fact is that you already have it in you to be someone who doesn’t have your bad habits. In fact, it is unlikely that you will ever have these bad habits for the rest of your life. You don’t have to quit smoking, you just have to get back to being a non-smoker. You do not need to be transformed into a healthy person, you just need to get back on track. Even if it was years ago, you are already living without this bad habit, which means you can do it again.
Use the word “but” to overcome negative speech. One thing about fighting bad habits is that it is easy to judge by not doing better. Every time you slip or make a mistake, it’s easy to tell yourself how much you suck.
Whenever that happens, complete the sentence with a “but”…
-“I’m fat and I don’t have the condition, but I could be in a condition for a few months from now.”
-“I’m stupid and no one respects me, but I’m working on developing an important skill.”
-“I’m a failure, but everyone else fails sometimes.”
Set a failure. We are all always smooth.
So instead of blaming yourself for a mistake, plan ahead. We are all off track, which distinguishes the top artists from all people that they are returning to the track very quickly. For a few tips to help you get back on track when you make a mistake, read this article.
Where you come from here
If you want the first step in overcoming bad habits, I suggest you start with awareness.
It is easy to get caught up in how you feel about your bad habits. You can make yourself feel guilty or spend your time dreaming about what you wish things were… but these thoughts take you away from what is really happening.
Instead, awareness will show you how to actually make a difference.
When did this bad habit actually happen?
How often do you do it each day?
Where are you?
Who are you with?
What causes this behavior and causes it to start?
Just following these problems will make you more aware of the behavior and give you a lot of ideas to stop.
Here’s an easy way to start: just keep track of how many times a day your bad habit occurs. Put a piece of paper in your pocket and pen. Every time your bad habit happens, mark it down on your paper. At the end of the day, count all the tally marks and see what your total means.
In the beginning, your goal is not to condemn yourself or to feel guilty about doing something unhealthy or unproductive. The only purpose is to know when and how often. Wrap your head around the problem knowingly. After that, you can start to apply the ideas in this article and break your bad habits.
Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but most of the time it takes patience. Most people who end up breaking bad habits try and fail many times before they can make it work. You may not succeed immediately, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have it at all.
