Bad habits are things that plague nearly everyone. There is always something that we wish that we could change about ourselves, whether it’s something small like biting our nails or something big like a smoking addiction. Breaking bad habits can be hard, but it’s something that can and should be done if you want to like a healthier life where you are in control of what you are doing, and not your bad habit. If you’ve ever thought to yourself that you want to stop doing something, it’s most likely been a bad habit that you’ve wanted to stop. Freeing yourself from bad habits will create a more peaceful lifestyle, and also free up more time to engage in more construction activities and behaviors. Follow these tips on how to break bad habits and learn how to live a bad habit-free life.
The first step to breaking bad habits it just to identify which habits in your life you consider bad, and why you want to stop doing those things. While something may be a bad habit to one person, the same may not hold true for another person. Bad habits are extremely personal, so making your own list of bad habits is a necessary first step to breaking these bad habits. Write down everything that you do that you’d consider a bad habit, and then determine which ones are important enough to take action against. Some of the most common bad habits are biting nails, being overly competitive, making excuses, chewing with your mouth open, smoking and many more. Identify your bad habits and how hard it will be to break the habit. While something like chewing with your mouth open can be broken using just a few little tricks, something like addiction can take much longer to break and be more difficult to break.
Admitting that you have a bad habit is one of the best ways to start to break the habit. Tell others that you are going to kick the bad habit and make it known that you are taking steps towards breaking the bad habit to members of your family and inner circle of friends. This way, you will feel more accountable for staying on track with breaking your habit and have people that will help you and remind you along the way. Being accountable to others is one of the best ways to make sure that something gets done. If your habit is something that you normally take part in with others, such as smoking or drinking, you will want to remove yourself from situations where you will be around these people. This will help you remain strong in your resolve to break the bad habit, and not give in to temptation.
The two main ways to break a bad habit are to quit it cold turkey and to replace the habit with another more constructive and positive habit. Stopping a bad habit cold turkey can be very hard, but it also gives you a sense of empowerment over the bad habit. Being able to stop whenever you want on your own free will is a very motivating action. Bad habits that are on the lighter side of the scale, such as nail biting, can most likely be broken cold turkey when a conscious decision is made to stop the bad habit. However, sometimes people have trouble with this method, particularly if the bad habit is an addiction.
Another proven method to break bad habits is to replace the bad habit with a new habit that is not considered bad. Just like you made a list of bad habits, you can also make a list of new habits that you would like to do. These habits could be something like exercise, learning a new hobby, cooking, calling a friend and more. These new habits will not only give you more constructive things to do, but also become your go-to actions when the temptation to participate in a bad habit creeps around. You should begin to replace your bad habit slowly so the change is not overwhelming and causes you to rethink breaking the bad habit. Start by replacing the bad habit with a new habit once or twice a week and work up to replacing the bad habit with the new habit altogether.
