Break Your Bad Habits In 21 Days
Breaking a bad habit is like breaking up with a guy who deserves it: it's not always easy to let go, but once you do, you'll be better off. Those bad habits – and you know what we're talking about – are nothing but bad for your health, your piece of mind, and your image.
Identification and Isolation
You may be a nose-picking compulsive liar who bites her nails while talking about everyone else's business, but as much as you might like to wipe out all your bad habits at once, you need to pick one to start with. Pick more than one and you're destined for failure.
So your first step is to identify your bad habits and pick the one that you most need to break – and the one you're most likely to succeed at breaking. Nothing breeds success like success, so start with the easiest habit to break and work your way up to the harder ones.
Preparation
If you really don't want to quit your biting your nails, you won't. If you're only trying to quit sucking on your hair because your mother wants you to, it's not going to happen. You have to want it. You have to want to break that habit for yourself and you have to be motivated with a plan. So take your time before you jump in. Decide what you're going to do. Are you going to quit cold turkey (all at one time)? Or are you going to cut down a little bit each day until you've completely broken the habit?
A few other things you should do before you begin include:
- Keep a journal. When do you usually overeat? Is it when you're sad or angry or bored? Do you hear yourself telling your best friend's secret before you even realize you've opened your mouth? Write it out and check out what triggers the bad habit so you can keep those occurrences in check.
- Tell somebody who wants you to succeed. If you have someone supporting you while you break your bad habit, you're more likely to succeed. Ask this person to check in with you to see how it's coming along and keep you accountable.
- Stay away from stress. Though this is good advice all the time, it is especially important when you're trying to let go of a crutch. Bad habits are nothing more than physical manifestations of emotional deficiencies. What does that mean? It means that when you feel too much emotion and you can't handle it, your body kicks in with a soothing habit to calm you down whether you want to or not. This doesn't mean that gaining control is out of your hands, but it does mean that staying aware of your feeling and what you're doing is a big part of quitting your bad habit.
Just Do It
Now that you know the ‘why' of your bad habit, you can come up with an alternative answer to the question. In brief, here are your steps to habit breaking success:
- Remove temptation. If you're eating too many sausage and cheese biscuits, get the sausage and cheese biscuits out of the house. If you're a thumb sucker, wear gloves or put something gross tasting to keep it out of your mouth.
- Replace the habit. Find something tastier (and healthier) than sausage and cheese biscuits or distract yourself by playing your favorite MP3 or calling a friend when nervous energy makes you feel like biting your nails.
- Make the replacement action your new habit. If you find that you enjoy your replacement habit, then go ahead and do it even when you're not feeling the urge to practice your bad habit. Creating a new habit is a great way to break the old.
Hints
- Don't pressure yourself. There's no reason you can't start over if you mess up.
- Give yourself 21 to 30 days to quit. It takes about 3 weeks to create a habit, so allow yourself to make mistakes.
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