Uncommon Advice For Breaking Bad Habits
Is there a habit that you want to kick but aren’t sure where to start? In this article we take a look at how you can tackle your bad habits and hopefully beat them for good.
If you’ve decided that this is going to be the year that you finally conquer all of your bad habits and start living the healthy, happy life you know you’re capable of, but you’re already flagging, forget the common advice you’ve been forgiven and forget trying to get by on sheer willpower alone – try these uncommon ways to break bad habits instead:
Embrace Your Bad Habit
By this, I don’t mean that you should give up and start smoking/drinking/ biting your nails/etc. With wild abandon. What I mean is that you should stop trying to ignore it; stop trying to push it out of your head completely. When you do this, it just means that it’s always on your mind in the worst possible way, and you’re always tempted back.
Instead, acknowledge the issue and start journaling about it. The more you write down your thoughts and feelings about that bad habit, what triggers it and how you feel when you’re doing it, the better you’ll get to grips with it and the easier it will be to identify solid strategies to stop, whether that be buying an e-cig at vapeshop.co.uk, so you still get the smoking sensation or talking about your feelings to a therapist instead of medicating with food. Give it a try – it really works.
Set Positive Goals
In a similar vein, instead of focusing on the things you aren’t going to do by setting the intention not to eat junk food in 2018 or not to bite your nails for the next year, for example, focus on what you are going to achieve. So, instead of saying: I will not eat Junk food.” say “I will eat healthy wholesome food.” or instead of saying “I will not smoke cigarettes.” say “ I will transition to vaping and my body will be free of many harmful toxins.” This is a neat psychological trick that makes you feel less like you’re lacking when you try to break a bad habit, and of course, that helps you to stay on course.
Challenge Your Thoughts
Whenever you have a thought, such as “I’m so depressed now I need to eat some chocolate to feel better.” for example, instead of letting that thought happen and following it down the rabbit hole to an almighty binge, challenge it. Give the opposing view that chocolate might make you feel better for a few minutes, but you’ll feel a whole lot worse pretty soon, and especially when you next check the scales. It’s like a very simple form of CBT, like the exercises you can find at positivepsychologyprogram.com/ that you can use to help you resist temptation at any time. Give it a try.
Change Your Environment
Last, but not least if you’re really serious about changing your habits, you might also want to change your environment too. Why? Because it is far easier to resist cookies if you’ve removed them from your environment or to turn down that drink when you aren’t in that one bar that always tempts you – it’s pretty simple really.
Time to break those bad habits!
Featured Image: Self portrait XXXVII_MMVIII by D. Sinclair Terrasidius on Flickr