How to Break Bad Habits: Steps for Change
We have already learned how to build new habits. The right habits can improve our lives, so it is important to build these habits. However, we probably also have bad habits. Think of snacking, or think of scrolling on our phones for half an hour or even more. These are all habits we want to eliminate in our lives to further improve ourselves. We must break bad habits. To break bad habits, we must have a plan. So, here are the steps for change we need.
Today we’ll discuss the following things:
- Understand the Triggers of the Bad Habits
- Break Bad Habits by Making Them Invisible
- Make the Bad Habit Impossible to Break It
- Replace the Bad Habit by Replacing it With a Good Habit
- Key Takeaways
Understand the Triggers of the Bad Habits
In the previous post about how to build a habit (https://www.maxwagenaar.net/unlock-your-potential-the-ultimate-guide-to-building-lasting-habits), we discussed that we need to trigger our brains into doing the habit by placing triggers. So, for example, if we want to drink more water, we place water bottles in every room. This way, our brain is triggered to drink water more often. The same goes for bad habits. Something in our brain is probably triggered by seeing something, smelling something, hearing something, or feeling a certain way. This can trigger us into doing this bad habit. We must understand what this trigger is so that we can make it either invisible or impossible.
Break Bad Habits by Making Them Invisible.
To break a bad habit, we can make it invisible. What is meant by that is that, the same way we put bottles of water everywhere, we drink more water. We hide our soda drinks in the refrigerator and put them in a place where we do not see them. If we see water bottles and no soda bottles, we are more likely to drink water. And we are less likely to drink soda. If we scroll too much on our phone, we must put it in a completely different room. Now we don’t see the phone when we are focusing on something else. Now we are not distracted by our phone notifications. This will reduce our time spent scrolling on our phones.
Make the Bad Habit Impossible to Break It
We can also break the bad habit by making it impossible. Or at least, more difficult. We are probably already doing this to some extent by making the bad habits invisible. Because if we are still deciding what the bad habit is, we now must find our trigger and put effort into grabbing our phone in a different room. It is an extra step, which will reduce the cost of doing it. Build up as much of these extra efforts as possible until we reach the point where it takes too much effort to do whatever we were trying not to do. So, for example, we do not want to eat chocolate anymore. Every time we see the chocolate at home, we are triggered by it, and we really want to eat it. It is likely that at the end of the day, we ate the chocolate. To make it impossible, or more difficult, we do not even buy chocolate anymore. If we want to eat chocolate now, we must first go to the grocery store and buy chocolate. It is probably an effort we will not make for just chocolate. If we want to reduce screen time, we put a limit on our phone. Lock the settings of the screen time limits with a random code, write the code somewhere, and put it somewhere where we must put in much effort to find it back. Or do not write it down at all. It takes us so much more time and effort now to find the code and scroll on our phone again. It is likely we will not do it.
Replace the Bad Habit by Replacing it With a Good Habit
The last thing we can do to break bad habits is replace the bad habit with a good one. For example, we feel like we snack too much. Instead of grabbing some bad food every time, we can also grab some fruit. Now the snacking is not a problem because we eat healthy food. Or if we watch too much television, we could say that in stead of watching television, we read. We have replaced bad habits with good habits, and it can be a good way to break the bad habit.
Key Takeaways
First, we need to understand what triggers our bad habits. If we know what triggers it, we can either make it invisible or impossible. Make it invisible by not letting our brain see the trigger, or make it impossible by making it so hard to start doing the thing we are triggered by that we do not want to do it anymore. Another good way to break bad habits is by replacing them with good ones. Instead of snacking on bad foods, use some fruits as snacks. Instead of watching TV, read a nice book. Breaking bad habits means getting ourselves one step closer to our ideal selves.
Links
If you want to read more about this topic, you can follow one of the following links:
Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results by James Clear
https://www.maxwagenaar.net/unlock-your-potential-the-ultimate-guide-to-building-lasting-habits
10 Daily Habit for Self-Improvement (maxwagenaar.net)
121 Habits Examples (Good and Bad!) (2024) (helpfulprofessor.com)
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