Bad habits are often tempting and breaking them can be tough. While some habits, like daily teeth brushing and regular bathing, are healthy, others can harm our well-being. Since habits take practice and repetition to form, the same is true when it comes to breaking them. If you're feeling stuck in a cycle of negative or addictive behaviour, follow these basic steps to break bad habits.
Find your triggers
Figuring out how to break a bad habit starts with introspection. Identifying the triggers behind your habitual behaviours is an essential step in moving past them. Note down somewhere to keep track of the pattern of your habits. Like where does this habitual behaviour come from, and at what time of the day? How do I feel when it happens? Does it happen right after something else?
Whatever it is, understanding the triggers behind your journey will be a powerful intrinsic behaviour in tough times and help kick the bad habit.
Build your action plan to disrupt the cues
Understanding the triggers of bad habits is the first step to overcoming them. Once you know what causes these habits, you can disrupt their flow. Proper planning is essential. Create barriers to bad habits and replace them with new, healthier habits. Then, establish a routine around these new habits. For instance, if your alarm prompts you to hit the snooze button every morning, try placing it on the other side of the room. This small change can disrupt the snooze habit and help you start your day more productively.
Out of Sight, Off Your Mind
If you struggle to stop scrolling through your Instagram feed or watching YouTube shorts, try removing or uninstalling the Instagram app or Facebook app, or keep the phone in another room as it might help in keeping your mind off it and help reduce the usage of it. Reduce the cues that trigger your bad habit.
Ask a friend for help
If you and your friend want to break a bad habit together, try doing it together. Quitting bad habits will be challenging no matter what, but it will be easier to face them with someone else.
Think Long term
Habits often develop because they satisfy short-term impulses. For example, chewing on your nails might immediately calm your nerves, but such short-term desires can lead to long-term consequences, such as nasty cuts and chewed-up fingers. When trying to change certain habits, it's helpful to focus on the long-term effects to remind yourself why it's important to stop them.
Don't kick multiple habits at the same time.
Imagining yourself anew with an improved lifestyle and good habits can be a great motivation, especially when you finally decide to change the unwanted habits. This sometimes can work, but often many experts suggest starting to change one habit at a time for better results.
Keep Reminders
Using stickers, sticky notes, or setting reminders on your phone will help you rethink your actions. Add a motivating note to yourself, such as 'After-dinner walk - remember how good it feels!'
Not every time it takes 21 days
There's a very old saying that making or breaking any habit takes only 21 days. However many experts believe it takes two or three months to make or break a habit. Give it time and don't panic, as not all habits vanish in just a few days, it takes time.
