Bad habits, everyone has them. For some it’s smoking or unhealthy eating, for others it’s always getting out of bed too late or putting things off. We all have bad habits.
But how do you get out of here? In a previous blog you read how you could create a killer morning with a morning routine . This is a good start in the field of self-improvement. Today it is time to take the next step and learn how to break your bad habits and replace them with new ones.
Bad habits
Everyone has bad habits. Often we are also aware of it. You often know that you are snacking, smoking or drinking too much. That you eat too unhealthy or spend too much time on social media. Often you want to stop, but you don’t know how. You want to drink less but before you know it you’re at a party again and you have a beer in your hand. Or you want to use less social media, but you always have your phone in your hand. Often these things happen automatically. Where does this come from?
hese automatisms and urges for bad things? All these habits unconsciously fulfill a certain need and are maintained by associations:
- When I’m in this situation I do this (Drinking at parties, checking social media when bored)
- When I feel this emotion I will (candy when you feel bad, don’t get out of bed when you feel bad)
Most bad habits can be traced back to certain emotions you don’t want to feel. Often these are things like stress, boredom or when you are a bit down. These are emotional triggers from which actions follow. You can see the emotion as a problem and the habit as a (bad) solution. This often makes it difficult to stop certain habits. You have no alternative and this leaves you unsatisfied and often chooses the bad habit again. That is why it is important to make sure that you have good habits as an alternative to the previous bad habits.
If you are determined to break and replace your bad habits, read Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book will help you create the best habits for yourself.
Breaking Bad Habits
Everyone wants to break their bad habits, but how do you do that? The first step is awareness. Think about where the habit came from and why you want to get rid of it. The following questions can help with this.
- When and how often do you do it?
- Where are you at that moment?
- Who are you with?
- What do you feel?
- What is the reason/trigger that makes you do it?
Write this down and keep it for a longer period of time. Then you will automatically find out where it comes from and why you do it. When you have answered this for yourself, there are several ways to break your habits.
‘It’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.’ – Benjamin Franklin
Remove triggers
One of the ways to break bad habits is to remove the triggers from your environment. This is easy to break with some habits, but will not always work. If you eat too much candy at home, you simply can’t buy candy anymore. If you want to smoke less, you don’t buy cigarettes anymore.
However, this is not possible for every situation. What if people around you are snacking? What if you are at a party and people are smoking? Then this works a lot less well. Or what if the trigger is a person with a bad influence. It may be better to leave that person out of your life, but this is not always possible. Removing triggers from your environment can therefore be a very simple solution. However, it is not always applicable.
Replacing bad habits
A second way is to replace bad habits directly. This can be easier than doing nothing in return. This is how you fulfill the emotions that are there. This works best for things like bad eating habits. If you eat too many snacks, you can eat a “healthy snack” instead of stopping. For example, a piece of fruit or a rice cake instead of a bag of chips. If you spend too much time on your phone in the evening or watch series for too long, replace it with something else that is fun. You can read a book or find a new hobby.
cold turkey
Of course there is also the cold turkey method. This method works best in many cases, but is not the easiest method. In this method you have to be hard on yourself and be strict. Don’t want to smoke anymore? Stop it immediately! This is difficult, uncomfortable and uncomfortable at first, but once you’ve got through it, it’s done. This works the same with not being able to get up early.
Do you normally always get up at 9 o’clock and do you want to get up earlier? Get up at 6 a.m. for a week. This may not be pleasant and may seem excessive, but it works! After doing this for a week, your old pattern of getting out of bed at 9 a.m. has been broken. After getting up at 6 a.m. for a week, it’s not hard to make a new habit of getting up at 7 or 8 a.m. It is important with this method that you stand behind your decision and really want to stop your habit. If you are sure that you want to stop a habit and go for it, this is the method. Go cold turkey and break your habits!
Creating and maintaining new habits
When you get rid of your old habits it is time for the next step and that is creating new ones. You do this through a 30-day plan, as already mentioned in the previous blog about the killer morning. If you stick to something for 30 days, you will succeed! For example, eat healthy for 30 days in a row, don’t smoke for 30 days, or get up early for 30 days!
But what about after that? How do you make sure you keep going after those 30 days and don’t unlearn the habit. There is also a rule for that, also known as the ‘Two day Rule’.
This rule is actually very simple. When you have a new habit, make sure that you never do not do it 2 days in a row. You can skip your habit for a day, but make sure that it never becomes 2. When this happens, there is a good chance that your habit will slip again and you will fall into old habits.
If you want to know more about habits and how to break them, read one of the books below:
- Breaking the habit of being yourself
- Making habits breaking habits
- Breaking bad habits
- Good habits bad habits
- Force of habit