Bad habits honestly just take over life. Whether it's excessive sugar intake or smoking, maybe it's endless scrolling through social media when you need to be doing something productive; we know how much more beneficial our lives would be if we didn't have them, mentally and physically. In saying this, snapping out of a bad habit isn't as simple as just stopping, unfortunately, your body over time has programmed to crave this habit, it is in a behavioural pattern loop to respond to a trigger. Triggers come in all different forms such as stress, addiction and boredom. In order to break your bad habit the first step is to find out what your trigger is, once you know replace your bad habit with an alternative good habit.
Steps to Breaking Your Bad Habit 1. Identify Your Trigger
It can be difficult to figure out what is causing the craving to kick in. Once you know your triggers the rest of your journey gets easier. If you can't seem to identify what is triggering you, I suggest for two or three days have a notebook with you and write how you feel (stressed/frustrated), what you were doing (on my phone, finished a chore) and the time it happened. This allows you to find patterns in time and feelings to narrow down your triggers.
2. Find a Buddy
Having another person attempt to replace a habit who understands your journey and the struggle will help to keep you on track to breaking your habit as you will have each other to fall back on.
3. Create a Substitute
This step isn't essential but can greatly help your journey to bettering yourself. Find something healthy and beneficial to you to replace your bad habit. So when you are triggered you have something to substitute the habit that would follow. This tricks your brain into feeling like it is meeting its addiction. This could be eating something healthy instead of junk food, taking deep long breaths for a minute instead of smoking or reading in replace of being of being sat on your phone.
4. Do Research & Make a Goal
To accomplish breaking your bad habit you need to know why it's bad and not benefiting you to begin with. Research the side effects, what it is made with, how it could harm you mentally and physically or anything that is negatively related to your habit. Now on paper write down your habit, the potential dangers, your goal, your substitute and how long you want to accomplish this! Everyone is different and will take different times, it's okay not to put time pressure on breaking your goal and instead have small daily steps over a long period of time.
5. Reward Your Efforts
A really big incentive to bettering yourself is to have a goal and reward yourself for your milestones. The best reward for your hard work is money, although you could have something like a road trip, girls' night or do something you love. For example, every time you say no to that cigarette put a couple of dollars in a jar. At the end of your journey use this money to buy something you want or keep going and save a lot of money for something bigger.
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Photo: Lana Del Rey Smoking - Pinterest
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Breaking Bad Habits
RandomBad habits honestly just take over life. Whether it's excessive sugar intake or smoking, maybe it's endless scrolling through social media when you need to be doing something productive; we know how much more beneficial our lives would be if we didn...
