We have to face it. We all have at least one bad habit that we want to change. Either drink too much; spend a lot of time on social networks; to smoke; leave everything for later; sleeping late and even biting your nails; we must know how to change bad habits for those that will make us successful.
Bad habits have the power to prevent you from meeting your goals. Since they attack your mental and physical health.
Research has shown that if you try not to think about a specific thing, it always ends up having the opposite effect. So, if you think that not thinking about that bad habit will help you eliminate it, on the contrary, it will make you think more about him.
Unfortunately, willpower is not a great ally either. If you can break a bad habit, chances are it will come back in a few days, months, or even years.
This commonly happens with people trying to quit smoking. They do it for a couple of weeks, but when they get to the “appropriate” environment, such as a party; their willpower plummets and they relapse into vice.
Also read: Your habits make success easier or more difficult.
How to change bad habits.
James Clear, entrepreneur and writer on behavioral psychology, who has published articles in media such as Forbes, Entrepreneur and Times; He shares on his blog how to break bad habits and replace them with good ones.
For Clear, bad habits waste your time and energy. For this reason, his proposal is not to eliminate them; it’s just replace them.
The first thing is…
1. Determine the causes of your bad habits.
Most bad habits are generated by two reasons: Stress or boredom. Most of the time bad habits are simply a response to these factors.
The important thing is that all human beings have the power to teach themselves new habits; that help fight stress or boredom.
Clearly behind this there may be deeper problems; which you should think about if you are serious about learning how to change bad habits. The important thing is that you are honest with yourself.
What is causing you to cling to something that is bad for you? Recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them.
Also read: Do you want to start a business from home? How many of these 25 habits do you have?
2. Don’t delete it, replace it.
It may sound contradictory, but bad habits bring a benefit to you and it is for this reason that you cling to them. However, these “benefits” generate small bad habits.
For example, opening your email inbox as soon as you arrive at the office can give you the feeling of staying connected and aware of everything that happens at work. However, going through all your emails destroys your productivity; it distracts you and can bring more stress to your routine.
This is why thinking about simply quitting bad habits doesn’t work. Rather, the key is to replace them with new habits that provide a similar benefit.
If you expect to simply break a bad habit without replacing it, then you will have certain unmet needs; for which you will fall again to cover them.
3. How to break a bad habit.
To learn how to change bad habits, Clear proposes some actions that will help you plan and support you in the process.
-First:
Choose which will be the substitute for the habit you want to eliminate.
-Second:
It excludes all the factors that bind you to bad habits. For example, if you smoke when you drink; avoid drinking.
Make your life easier by avoiding the things that make you fall into the bad habit.
Also read: How to earn money? Just drop these 14 habits.
-Third:
Join forces with someone else.
The fact that your failure is public will make you think twice about failing. It’s much easier to maintain your willpower if you share your victories with other people.
Likewise, Clear advises surrounding yourself with people who have the same lifestyle you want to live.
You should not become someone else, just visualize yourself as the individual you know, but without bad habits.
We all make mistakes, after all we are human, the important thing is to keep in mind that we have the power to change the present no matter how bad it may seem.
Conclusion.
If you really want to learn how to change bad habits, you must raise awareness about them. Answer the following questions and like any project, measure your progress.
- When exactly does your bad habit occur?
- How many times do you do it a day?
- Where are you?
- Who is with you when it happens?
- What causes this behavior?
Once you identify the causes, you must come up with a positive habit to replace it and exclude the factors that make you fall into the bad habit.
Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but most of all you will need to be persistent to achieve it. You may fail several times, but don’t give up.
And remember, if you are really interested in creating your own business, you can read our book “How to create a company while working: Discover how to manage your time, manage your money and motivate yourself while creating a company and working for another” , where you will find all the information you need to found your own company, without having to leave your job.
