4 Keys to Conquering Bad Habits
As I am now 22 days into the month-long challenge of daily blogging, this morning I was inspired by the concept of establishing and breaking habits. As a current participant of a professional development program, becoming more intentional about what things or actions I spend my time on have been prevalent themes.
The last few months of my life have been somewhat of a “habit overhaul”. I’ve developed routines in regard to work schedules, eating/drinking, exercise, relationships, and many other smaller facets of my daily life. I spent the afternoon reflecting on my experiences and put together a few of the key techniques I used to break down some of my bad habits that could help others as well.
Diagnose and eliminate the triggers of each bad habit
Identifying the cues that lead up to engaging in specific negative behavior is a great first step towards breaking down a harmful routine. Understand what causes you to engage in a bad habit, and look to change your environment. Want to stop eating junk food? Rid your house of anything related to junk food. Do you only smoke when you drink? Stop going to the bar after work. It’s not always an easy practice, but a good method of figuring out exactly why you do a certain action is to immediately stop yourself whenever you notice yourself doing the negative behavior and work backwards to analyze your feelings and determine what is causing each response.
Replace the habit with a healthy alternative
Realistically, even if you successfully diagnose the root cause of a bad habit, it’s near impossible to eliminate it no questions asked. One thing you can do to distract yourself when you are craving something is to find a fresh alternative to fulfill that need. Not only are you staying on track with abstaining from a bad habit, but you are actually developing a healthy pattern in its place. If you love coffee but struggle with the caffeine, switch everything to decaf. Common alternatives for smokers are patches, e-cigs, and other forms of smokeless tobacco. While not impossible, quitting cold turkey is impractical in many cases. Controlling human urges is a really difficult challenge – it’s okay to tackle it one step at a time.
Keep track of your progress
When working to break habits, as it is in life, you get out of it what you invest into it. The more work you put into creating a detailed plan for success, the more likely you are to develop a healthy routine. Ask your friends to hold you accountable and check in periodically. Put prompts out all over your house or office as helpful reminders – use your former-self as a resource! Find a reliable physical or digital tool to keep track of your progress – I currently enjoy Strides: Goal and Habit Tracker. For extra inspiration, you can even set up a rewards/penalty system to motivate you even more. If you are intentional about checking-in with yourself every day, positive results are much more likely to follow.
Prepare for failure
If this process was easy, every person would live incredibly healthy lives and find success beyond their wildest dreams because nothing could stand in there way – but sadly it’s not easy. You will mess up. Be kind to yourself! Take the energy that comes from feeling disappointed or that you let yourself down and turn it into something positive. Use it as motivation for not making the same mistake in the future. Henry Fonda said, “failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, and this time more intelligently.” You don’t want to get complacent with failure, but it’s even more important to not give up at the first sign of it and keep working. It takes a long time to develop bad habits, so naturally, it takes a long time to get rid of them too. Keep at it.
These skills are applicable regardless of the magnitude of the habit. It doesn’t matter whether you want to change your life by giving up smoking or drinking, or you simply want to not eat as much fast food. With a structured mindset and a detailed plan of attack, no habit is truly unbreakable.
