How to Break Bad Habits

How to Break Bad Habits

”You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‘I release the need for this in my life.” ~Dr. Wayne Dyer

We all have that one bad habit we struggle to quit permanently.

Whether it’s poor eating habits, not exercising, smoking, drinking, sleeping in too late, procrastinating, running late, watching too much TV or staying glued to our phones, bad habits plague the best of us.

Your bad habit of choice might seem harmless in some situations (skipped your workout again? Oh well, there’s always tomorrow), and you might not immediately see or feel the repercussions of your choices.

But the long-term growth we miss out on as a result of those bad habits is hindering us from growth.

Bad habits offer us a sense of comfort and act as a security blanket, making them hard to break.

Let’s discuss how to break bad habits.

What Happens When You Don’t Address Bad Habits?

First off, I want you to think about the outcome of doing nothing to curb your bad habits. Here are some possibilities:

Your daily routine won’t improve.
You won’t get the results you want (i.e. continuing to eat pastries for breakfast when you’re trying to establish better eating habits).
Your mindset will suffer.
The healthy diet and lifestyle you desire will suffer.
You won’t feel inspired or motivated.
Some of your goals won’t be achieved.
The relationships you have may not flourish as much as they have the capacity to.
You won’t operate at your maximum potential.
Because you don’t have integrity or discipline with yourself in this one area, your integrity and discipline in other areas of your life will suffer, too.

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Know Your Reason Why for Quitting

In order to take authority over a bad habit, you must know your “why” for wanting to quit, or you’re going to fail.

Make a list of all the reasons why you want to break your bad habit.

As an example, let’s say you want to reduce your consumption of social media down to no more than 15 minutes a day. Some reasons you want to do this could be to free up time that could be spent on hobbies and increase your productivity at the office.

Write down your reasons and keep them somewhere they can be viewed on a daily basis. This will help drive you to break the habit.

Related:

Change Your Feelings Toward Your Bad Habit

Before you can successfully break a bad habit, you need to change your feelings toward it. Otherwise, you’ll feel deprived. This is especially true when giving up junk food, alcohol, smoking, social media, etc.

If you look at forgoing the bad habit as deprivation, you’ll likely cave in to temptation. When you re-work the thoughts you have about the bad habit to work for you and not against you, this will help you build resolve to stick to your plan.

As a helpful tool along the way, you can also find resources that will help you dig into the roots of why you desire the bad habit and re-train your brain to not want it.

You are 100% capable of changing your thinking about anything. Circumstances are neutral.

Here are resources to help you break bad habits and implement good ones…

Books:

Blog Posts:

Podcasts:

Accountability

It is so, so important to have accountability (and get an accountability partner if needed) and it truly makes all the difference in the world.

Find a workout buddy or accountability partner who will check in on your progress and motivate you when things get tough.

Even better, find an accountability partner in your shoes, struggling with the same thing.

It’s easier to stay on track when you work as a team.

If you don’t have someone in your life who has the same struggle you do, just make sure you have a trusted companion who will serve to keep you accountable. Someone who will motivate you to keep going and remind you why you quit that bad habit in the first place.

It’s harder to slip up when you have a support team checking up on you.

Related:

Quit a Bad Habit —–> Get Results

When you finally give up whatever has control over you, the integrity you build with yourself in that one area compounds into other areas, snowballing.

It won’t happen overnight, but even the tiniest habit changes accumulate into big results down the road.

Related:

Before You Go

To give up a bad habit, you must understand the consequences of not giving it up. You must also know your “why” behind giving it up, understand the root cause of why you feel you need it in your life, re-train your brain to not need it, and hold yourself accountable.

Have you ever ditched a bad habit you knew was preventing you from experiencing more? What was the outcome?

Are you currently struggling to give up a bad habit?

Let me know in the comments below.

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Lisa

Hi! I'm Lisa. I help women live purposeful, fulfilling and joyful lives. I'm happily married and a fur mom to two boxers and two rabbits. I love Jesus, freelance writing, fitness, personal development, reading books, football, cross-stitching, and video games.

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June 22, 2020 5:10 pm

[…] In this article I explain how I broke the bad habit of drinking wine on a near-daily basis, and I was able to uphold this for many months. But recently, I’ve had a hard time abiding by this plan. […]