Bad habits can be hard to break. Regardless of the habit, destructive
behaviors keep you away from the life you desire.
Unhealthy habits can have a negative impact on your physical
and mental health and leave you feeling as if you don't have enough control
over your impulses. While change is frequently challenging, having a plan can
make it easier.
This step-by-step plan can help you eliminate any bad habit:
This step-by-step plan can help you eliminate any bad habit:
1. Monitor the habit for a week. Make note
of the times you're likely to engage in the habit. Maybe you only smoke around
certain friends. Perhaps you bite your nails when you're stressed or bored. At
any rate, identify under which circumstances your habit is most likely to rear
its ugly head.
2. Find out why. Your habit is satisfying some
need. You're gaining a benefit or you wouldn't be exhibiting the behavior at
all. Figuring out the positive aspects of your habit will help you understand
it. Once you understand it, you can begin to change it.
3. Develop a substitute behavior. Find a
more acceptable alternative that satisfies the same need that was being met by
the old habit. So if your habit helps you to deal with stress, what are some
healthy alternatives? Yoga? Other exercise? Deep breathing? Meditating?
Singing? Watching a comedy? Calling a friend?
·
What could you do instead that isn't harmful?
Better yet, what could you do instead that would be healthy for you?
·
Start substituting the new habit for the old. It
will take a fair amount of attention at first, but begin intentionally
substituting the new behavior each time you would automatically use the old
behavior. It's likely to be challenging, but with a positive focus, you can do
it.
4. Measure your progress. Keep track of
how many times you engage in the old habit and how many times you engage in the
new habit. Progress can be difficult to determine without measurement; if you
don't know where you are, how will you know if you're moving forward or
backward? By measuring your progress, you accomplish two things:
·
You get feedback so you know how successful you
are.
·
You have the added motivation of seeing your
progress.
5. Be patient. Take one step at a time. Complete
perfection is unreasonable, but a little perfection can work wonders. Don't
be upset when the inevitable slip occurs while you're breaking your old habit.
Just examine the situation dispassionately and determine a better solution for
the next time. You still gain a lot by decreasing the frequency of the bad
habit.
·
A good idea is to focus on having one perfect day
today. The idea of one day without the habit may seem quite reasonable
- and doable - to you. A string of perfect days is a lot easier than trying to
be perfect for an extended period.
·
For tough habits, a perfect hour might work
better for your short-term goal.
Now that you're armed with a process, you can start
eliminating that bad habit today. In 30 days, the new, healthier habit should
be a part of your routine without requiring as much conscious effort. Changing
to more positive habits can be challenging, but you gain a wonderful feeling of
accomplishment when you do so.
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