How We Can Break Bad Habits for Good

How We Can Break Bad Habits for Good
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Everyone has some bad habits they can't seem to break. 69% of people primarily judge themselves, which can send people into a spiral of self-destruction. Managing to get rid of bad habits for good requires you to use a number of strategies and tactics. You can apply the same principles to every single bad habit you have. An alcoholic may go to alcohol rehab, whereas a stressed individual may go to yoga class, but they have a lot of things in common.

This guide is going to introduce you to the main ways you can break bad habits for good.

Make Each Bad Habit Painful

It may seem counterproductive, but this is one of the best things you can do. Make every bad habit more painful through fining yourself for every offense. One of the most common examples of this is the swear jar method. Each time you swear you put a dollar in the jar.

You can apply this to any form of bad habit. Once you start to pay up for each bad habit, you will learn to stop doing it. Punishments are effective for everyone.

Learn to Understand Where Your Bad Habits Come From

Grasping how decisions are made will help you to understand why you decide to make those bad decisions in the first place. People are known to repeat bad habits without realizing it because they have little idea where their bad habits are coming from.

Experts say there are five cues to every bad habit, but through learning about them you can better control your behavior. These five cues tend to differ depending on the expert, but they all work towards understanding the triggers of every bad habit.

Go Slow with Changes

It doesn't make sense for you to try to completely change your lifestyle overnight. Only through slow and gradual changes can you make permanent changes to your life. What it takes to form a good habit is time, effort, and a lot of determination. This applies even more when people have spent a whole lifetime building up a bad habit.

Making small changes will prevent any shock to the body. Dieters experience this problem all the time. They cut out their favorite foods all at once and manage to diet successfully for a few weeks. When their will falls, which it always does, they put on lots of weight, and are often even heavier than before.

You need to go slow with the changes you're making.

Do You Have the Tools for Success?

This is something a lot of people don't realize they need. You need the tools for success and you need proper training. It's crucial to train employees to take on new responsibilities, so why do people think they can cure a bad habit without proper training?

There's a reason why the lifestyle management industry is so huge. With seminars and training program being sold for hundreds of dollars at a time, more and more people understand the need to learn before they begin making changes.

If you want the tools for success, you need to take active steps to acquire them.

Follow in Someone Else's Footsteps

It's inevitable that people are going to feel like they are being ground down sometimes. You will hit the inevitable wall and you will want to return to your bad habits. This is the defining moment of your journey because if you can make it through this wall you're going to find dealing with the healing process much easier going forward.

However, most people fail at this stage. You can make it less likely by allowing yourself to be inspired by someone. Follow what they do and adapt their strategies to suit your life.

You are the reason why you're not changing, and the only way you can do something about it is by bringing someone else in to help.

Maintain a Positive Environment

Positivity will set you free. Bad habits tend to return when people are experiencing problems at home or at work. The easiest way to stay inspired is to not give yourself a reason for giving up on your efforts.

So how do you go about maintaining a positive environment?

Set aside some time for yourself to enjoy yourself. Adopt a 'cheat day', where you are able to eat chocolate or to drink alcohol. Breaking a bad habit doesn't have to involve becoming some form of amateur monk.

It's easier than you think to begin breaking those bad habits. How are you going to go about breaking your bad habits today?

Popular in the Community

Close

HuffPost Shopping’s Best Finds

MORE IN LIFE