Combatting Your Bad Habits and Creating Good Ones Instead.
The majority of us possess habits that do not contribute to our success, as well as ones that do. However, there are some negative habits that are very difficult to get rid of once they have been ingrained in your brain. I am going to provide you with some insights into how I have and am still trying to get rid of my bad habits and how I always stick to my good habits, as well as create new ones that will soon become part of my daily routine and will overall have a dramatic, positive impact on my life.
To begin with, once something becomes a habit, it can be very hard to get rid of. Our brain has become used to performing a certain action or thinking a certain thought, whenever a particular situation or feeling arises. And so, it may take time to be completely rid of this habit, but what helped me was giving myself a “consequence” for whenever I gave into a bad habit. For some people, this may be smoking, drinking, biting your nails, scrolling etc. What I would tell myself, is that if I scroll on my phone today for too long, that means in the morning I’d have to wake up early, have a cold shower, go to the gym, do some productive work, do a 30 minute meditation, spend 30 mins journaling and so on. These don’t have to be exactly like this, they can be simpler to suit your desires, like going for a 15 min walk or simply telling yourself that you look beautiful that day. Now, I know what you’re thinking. How is this a consequence? By consequence, I mean for the rest of the day after you perform the bad habit, or the next day, you must replace this bad habit with 10 good ones. You must have the most productive and positive day for the rest of that day or the next day. Now, I want you to think to yourself and know that you should really be doing these good habits everyday anyway. But this is a journey, and it isn’t going to happen just overnight, as much as we want it to. However, it will happen much sooner than you think if you keep your determination and drive. Remember that if you act as your highest or future self would, you will eventually be that person.
Another thing is you must remember that every habit arises from a certain situation or feeling. Analyse the specific time when you seem to perform this bad habit and what you are feeling in that moment. For me personally, I would bite my nails anytime I felt anxious or stressed, and even when I was scrolling on social media (two bad habits combined in one!). Now, the solution to this was to think to myself : ok, scrolling for a long time clearly makes me anxious, so I need to set a timer on my social media or keep my phone out of reach and out of visibility. Or delete the app. Out of sight means out of mind. By putting my phone in a place where I could easily forget about it, I couldn’t scroll, which meant I wouldn’t feel anxious and therefore, would not bite my nails. Don’t make things easily accessible to you that spur on a bad habit or emotion. If you are eating too much sugar, don’t buy it! Throw every junk food you have in your cupboard in the bin. Then you can’t eat it. If you think negative thoughts about yourself, replace each negative thought with 10 good thoughts you love about yourself. Soon, you’ll find that you can only find the positive things about yourself and there isn’t much negative ones anymore.
Small steps! This is also really important in terms of creating new habits. A new habit won’t be formed overnight, and it may be hard to stick with. Taking small but effective steps is what is essential in creating a positive habit. If your end goal is to wake up at 5am every morning and you currently wake up at 11am, it is going to be super difficult to change your sleep schedule in one day. However, if you go to bed half an hour earlier one night and wake up half an hour earlier the next morning, and continue to do this until your desired sleep schedule, it will be much easier and quicker to get to your end goal. Or, if your goal is to get to the gym five times a week, but you currently don’t do much exercise at all, you can start by going for one day doing light exercise. Then you build it up to two days, then three, then four, then five. This is how you build good habits.
Stay tuned for many more articles on the way!