Kicking a bad habit to the curb is not an easy task for most people. After all, that is why it is called a habit. However, the sooner we stop our bad habits, no matter what they may be, the better our lives will become. I will not lie to you and say it will be an easy task. But, with the right approach and some helpful tips, it is more than accomplishable.
Check out these tips from mindbodygreen.
1. Figure out why and when you’re doing it.
There’s usually an underlying reason for your bad habits, such as boredom or stress, and if you pay attention, you’ll notice that all of your vices are tied to certain situations or routines.
These bad habits generally also reward you with something: smoking rewards you with stress relief, and wasting time on the Internet temporarily rewards you by diverting your attention.
Identifying how your vices are rewarding you, as well as when they occur is the first step to eliminating them from your life entirely.
For instance, you may notice that you drink more alcohol when you’re around certain people, or maybe you tend to overeat when you’re home alone. Knowing what triggers certain behavior can help you to come up with the right strategies for changing these unhealthy patterns.
2. Find a replacement habit.
Research shows that it’s far more effective to replace a bad habit with a better one than to simply cut out the old habit.
Why? Replacing a habit takes less mental effort than completely eliminating it, and believe it or not, willpower is actually a limited resource.
Once you’ve figured out how your vices are rewarding you, you can establish new habits that will reward you in similar ways, but without the same negative side effects, or at least fewer side effects.
For example, if you need to improve your diet, making an effort to snack on fruit instead of junk food would be a lot easier than not eating anything at all, and replacing your smoking break with another less damaging activity, like eating a small snack, would be more effective than doing nothing at all.
3. Don’t try to suppress your thoughts.
When trying to kick a bad habit, people often attempt to think about everything but that one activity, which of course, causes them to think about nothing but that one activity.
Why? Studies show that when we try to suppress thoughts, they actually come back stronger, because our subconscious doesn’t differentiate between “do” and “don’t” and will inevitably fixate on the one thing we’re trying so hard to ignore.
4. Make changes to your routine or environment.
New situations make you more conscious of your behavior and choices, so changing something in your routine or environment, even if it isn’t directly connected to the habit you are trying to break, can make it easier to welcome new habits.
Image Credit: therabreath
To see the rest of the tips and the entire article, mindbodygreen
