Break Your Bad Habits
Everyone has at least one, if not a few, bad habits they’d like to break. Unfortunately, they are habits for a reason ― and it isn’t always easy to walk away, and leave them behind. Whatever your bad habits may be, it’s possible to break them, and it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you believe it will. At least, not if you use these simple hacks to halt your bad habits.
- Change the Narrative
Instead of viewing your efforts to halt bad habits, change the mental and verbal dialog into something more positive. That means you need to eliminate language and thoughts like:
- Quitting smoking
- Stopping late night snacking
- Putting an end to endlessly hitting the snooze button
- Eliminating sodas from your diet
Instead of these negative words that frame the narrative for failure, change the words you use to words that are more positive, such as:
- Embracing better lung function or clearing the air in your lungs
- Snacking consciously
- Waking on time or early
- Choosing drinks wisely
The differences are subtle, but habit changing.
- Identify Cues and Triggers
For instance, smokers often have times when they desire cigarettes most intensely. It can be after meals, when just getting up in the morning, or other specific times during the day or night. Understanding those moments that send cues to your brain that tell you to light up can have you prepared with alternate activities instead.
For some, it can be chewing sugarless or nicotine gum. For others, it might be to take a walk for a few minutes instead. Identifying cues and triggers helps you prepare, and guard against the temptation when it arises.
- Change Your Environment
While it isn’t always possible to just up and move to change habits, a brief change of scenery can do wonders for your efforts when the urges or temptations will be most intense. Then, when you return to your normal environment and routine, you’ll be on your way to newer, positive habits.
- Get More Sleep
Unless the habit you’re trying to change is sleeping too much, there are few habits embracing this change won’t help. In addition to helping you accomplish your habit changing missions, getting more sleep each night can also help you feel better, and improve your mood while you are making these strides toward a better you.
Perhaps your family will better appreciate your struggles when you have more sleep while going through these changes – much more than if you’re struggling with a bad mood or caffeine, nicotine, insert substance of choice here, withdrawals.
How can you get more sleep?
There are several things you can try to improve your sleep quality and quantity while seeking to halt bad habits, including:
- Adopt a sleep routine that you follow religiously.Over time, this will be a crucial signal to your brain that it’s time to begin shutting off for the night.
- Change your mattress.Consider a new mattress that offers firm support and luxurious plush comfort at the same time, like the Latex for Less Natural Latex Mattress.
- Remove all screens, large and small, from your bedroom. These screens become distractions or rabbit holes that rob you of critical sleep, and leave you with diminished performance throughout the day.
- Be consistent when going to bed and getting up in the morning. Consistent timing, along with a regular bedtime routine (lasting 30 minutes or more), can do wonders for your ability to fall asleep on time once your brain understands the routine.
These are important first steps and the results for your effort to halt bad habits can be phenomenal.
- Replace Negative Habits with Something Rewarding
Perhaps the simplest and most often overlooked ways to make your habit-changing process more pleasurable is giving yourself a reward for a negative habit, and it can work magic for you.
Instead of engaging in the habit you’re attempting to break, replace it with a different “reward” instead.
- Shake Up Your Routine
Some habits we fall into are simply a fact of our routines. If you want to break the habit, the simplest way to do that is by changing your routine.
By shifting into a routine that doesn’t allow the time or energy for the habit you’re trying to break means you’re far more likely to succeed in breaking the habit, and making other positive changes in the process.
- Seek Support
One way to do this is to go public with your struggle, and ask for accountability partners. Remember that it’s a partnership, however. Just as you are seeking their support in your efforts to effect positive change, they’ll likely seek your assistance for similar purposes.
You don’t need to move mountains, or hide out from the world to shake up your routine, and halt bad habits. It doesn’t have to be as difficult as all that. These seven hacks can help you change the way you view ending bad habits — and how quickly you accomplish your goals.
