Chapter 7 Say Goodbye To Your Bad Habits

“The only proper way to eliminate bad habits is to replace them with good ones.” - Jerome Hines

If you want to create a life of happiness, then it’s imperative that you start working on getting rid of your bad habits, and replacing them with positive ones. However, doing this isn’t as simple as it sounds. It’s because bad habits take time to build. It doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it occurs over a period of time until it gets to a certain point where you do the habit out of rote. You don’t need to think about it; you just do it. That’s when you know you’ve formed a habit. Bad habits have the undesirable effect of making you unhappy in the long run. Sure, it may bring you some form of satisfaction  while you’re doing the routine or habit, but it’s not going to be  good for you or your health as time goes by.

For example, smoking. You feel good when you’re smoking. The act of inhaling and exhaling cigarette smoke helps you diffuse  your stress levels to manageable levels. But on the flip side, smoking has a lot of negative side effects, especially on your health. Long-term effects of smoking include cancer, brain damage, emphysema, tooth decay, and so much more. Even the people inhaling your second-hand smoke are at risk of these diseases, too. So, you see, smoking is only going to bring you temporary satisfaction. In the long run, it’s going to kill you.

Now, breaking bad habits will likewise take some time. You’d  need to really work on it and have the self-awareness to know when you’re doing the habit. Then you need self-control and self- discipline to be able to put a stop to it.

Here are a few strategies you can use to help you say goodbye to your bad habits:

Know your cues or triggers

Experts say habits have three parts: a trigger or cue, a routine, and finally, a reward. For example, in a smoker’s case, one possible trigger could be eating. After you’ve eaten, you feel a strong urge to smoke. Or, it could be that stress is your trigger. When you’re stressed, the need to smoke becomes stronger.

Knowing what your cues or triggers are is the first step to overcoming a bad habit. Study your bad habits, analyze when you feel the need to carry it out. If you're trying to quit drinking alcohol, then stop buying alcohol. When you’re  socializing  with  friends, feel free to tell them you’re trying to quit. If you’ve got good  friends, they’ll support you and help you achieve your goals, so they’re not going to offer any alcohol to you. If your friends still pressure you to drink, then perhaps you  should  start  spending less time with them and find others who’ll be more supportive.

Reduce your stress

Sometimes bad habits form  in response to various stressors in  our life. You pick up the habit of smoking when you’re stressed. You pick up drinking when you’re overworked or when you have problems at home. You pick up procrastination when faced with a mountain of work. When you’re trying to beat deadlines, you drink tons of coffee to give yourself a mental boost.

These are but a few examples of bad habits that people pick up when they become stressed. If you find yourself responding negatively to stress, then it’s time to do something about it. How? By trying your best to reduce your stress levels.

Figure out what makes you stressed, and try to find a way to avoid these situations to make your stress levels go down. In most cases, living a stress-free life isn’t going to be possible, so you need to face it head on and learn to control or manage your stress.

With that said, it’s important to note that stress isn’t really such a bad thing. In fact, many experts say some stress is necessary in  our lives. It releases hormones which trigger our survival instincts.  It helps us perform our tasks more efficiently and more effectively.  It only becomes a bad thing when you let it take over your life,  that is, when you allow yourself to get stressed constantly.

Anchor your bad habits to new and positive ones

One of the easiest ways to break a bad habit and replace it with a positive one is to use an ‘anchor’ system. This is how it works: every time you catch yourself starting to do the bad habit, you do the new one instead.

For instance, you’re trying to break the bad habit of, say, biting  your nails. Let’s say this bad habit is triggered by stress.  Now,  you also want to build a more positive habit of reading or listening to inspirational content to help you grow as a person.

Every time you catch yourself biting your nails, you stop and then you pick up a good book nearby and read a few pages. Or you  can go on YouTube and listen to your favorite motivational speakers. After a few weeks of doing this routine, you’ll be able to remove nail-biting from your list of bad habits, and end up more inspired and less stressed in the process.

List all the reasons why you should quit the habit

There’s a reason why bad habits are called ‘bad.’ They have undesired effects that may or may not manifest immediately. For example, drinking. You know that when you drink in excess, you end up with a terrible hangover in the morning. You’ve probably puked a few times in public. Perhaps you notice your friends are  no longer inviting you to social events and parties because they're afraid you'll have too much to drink and cause a scene.

Write all these negative consequences down and use it as your “why” for why you should stop drinking. Make your descriptions as detailed and as graphic as possible. Every time you make a mistake and you go back to your old ways, look up this list and make a promise to do better next time.

Re-examine your life from time and time and assess if you have any bad habits left that need to be stopped. Of course, it’s entirely possible you’ll pick up some other bad habits in the future, even if you end up turning your life around and live a happy existence.

That’s okay. No one’s perfect. Just pick up where you left off and never stop working on making yourself a better person each and every day.