How to quit bad habits

We all want to have a lifestyle free of bad habits, habits that can ruin our physical and/or psychological health, relationships with others, professional life…etc.  We manage to quit one or two "small" bad habits , but when it comes to that habit we had from a long time ago and which is the most negative one, we fail every time, and we feel hopeless.

That’s a normal thing, because not all our habits are the same, in other words, we don’t have the same relationship with all our habits. The hardest ones to quit are those we actually love and feel complete with, and of course, one of the hardest things to do for a Human is to take away something he loves from him and to make him feel incomplete.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to quit this kind of habits, it’s completely possible if we take the time to understand ourselves and our hidden links with our bad habits, and then act in a smart way to overcome them. Whatever what this habit is (gossiping, smoking, lying, eating junk food, watching pornography…) there is a way to quit it if you first have a solid will, and you are ready to be serious about it. Here are 5 tips to overcome your bad habits.

Focus on one bad habit

Don’t make the mistake most of the people do when they rush under a motivation burst and start to think about quitting all their bad habits at once and changing their lives in one go. You will get overwhelmed after one or two days, you will feel a huge pressure, and you will give up easily. What you are supposed to do is to go for a 1vs1 only and to focus on just one bad habit and take your time to quit it gradually.

Look for motivation

There are two ways to build motivation for quiting a bad habit; the first one is to recognize the negative effects of it, to really see and understand how it can or how it is actually ruining your life. The second one is to think about how your life will be better without this bad habit, think about all what you will gain and how happy and comfortable you will feel.

One important thing to mention, is that sometimes while you are looking for motivation, you may encounter, for example, some articles or videos, telling you that what you think is a bad habit is something normal blah blah… ignore those lies, they are just trying to tell people what they would love to here to get more traffic. You have to believe in what you feel deep inside you, what your logic tells you, to believe in facts and on what honest people who really experienced having that habit say.

What are the causes and triggers?

It’s an extremely hard thing to quit a bad habit while you are still exposed to all its causes and triggers, it is torture. You need to put your daily life scenario above you, to analyze it and try to find out what pushes you to do this habit.

For example, if you are trying to overcome the bad habit of eating too much, pay attention to when you feel like you want to eat. If you start eating too much when you come back from work and sit on your sofa watching TV, and when you are stressed, you will need to avoid watching TV and look for another thing to do for entertainment and relaxation and to deal with your stress problem first (How to manage stress). For every habit, there are conditions you have to change and triggers you should identify and eliminate.

Reward and punishment

You should treat yourself the same way you treat a child when he does something good you told him to do, you give him candies, and when he does something bad you told him not to do, he is grounded. If you are not sure about your ability to endure penalties, just stick with putting rewards for yourself everytime you manage to stay away from the bad habit or for every week passed without it for example. I let you use your imagination and creativity to come up with your own rewards.

Identify benefits of your bad habit

Yes, bad habits have benefits too. You need to identify them and to look for other good habits that can give you similar benefits. If telling lies all the time gives you the feeling of fun and adventure, look for other good and safe things to do, to experience the same feelings, like writing down stories from your imagination and publishing them on a blog or in social media, maybe that will not only make you overcome your bad habit but also change your life,… from a liar to a writer of great and entertaining stories.