Author: Bruno Boksic / Source: Lifehack
Do you struggle with that afternoon snack which creates love handles? How about that smoking or drinking habit which is already starting to get pesky? Or the nail-biting, overspending, too much TV or social media?
I get it.
I had all of those and more, and it seemed like an impossible task to get rid of them.
And for someone scared, frustrated, and with no information and guidance– it was.But that all changed when I learned that all of the above are mechanical tasks automated by our brains or simply said — habits.
And all habits fall under the same laws and rules of creation and “destruction.” So I learned how to destroy and break habits and I applied that to the ones in my life.
They didn’t only work for myself, I shared the way with my friends and it worked for them too. So the process which I will describe in the article will work for you too.
It’s time to get rid of those troublesome bad habits and the first step is has nothing to do with the habit.
1. Work on Your Environment
The first thing to stop doing a habit has actually nothing to do with the actual performance on the habit. It has everything to do with the environment around you.
See, habits consists of three parts: A cue– which signalizes the brain to go into routine- which is the actual performance of the habit, and the reward- which is the satisfaction that we get from performing that routine.
It’s like you walking down the street and spotting an ice-cream stand (cue). You immediately walk over there and get double chocolate ice cream balls. You start devouring it (routine) and as soon as the sweet taste of ice cold chocolate hits your tongue, you feel the ecstasy (reward).
Environmental design is all about changing your environment so that you don’t experience the cue at all.
In the case above, it would mean not walking down the street where they sell the ice cream that you really want to have. Or to make it way harder for you to consume the ice cream by leaving your wallet at home and not being able to buy it. Or knowing that the stand only takes cash and you only carry cards with you.
As long as you can make the environment go in your favor as much as possible, it will be easier to drop the bad habit.
If you eat cookies at night, stop buying them in the groceries. Same applies to alcohol or soda beverages.
If you can eliminate the environment which pushes you into the habit that you don’t want, you have already done half of the work.
But then, there are times when you will fail at this. It will happen for sure and when it does, this is how you need to respond.
2. Start Small, As Small As Possible
It’s unreasonable to think that you will shut down your bad habit immediately and that you won’t fail even once. That’s just a recipe for disaster.
It’s more about how you manage yourself after you fall down.
The one night where you had the ice cream is bad, but what’s worse is if you drop the attempt to stop eating ice cream altogether just because you had it once.
I set myself a daily habit of reading 20 pages of a book a day and yes, there were days when I didn’t read at all. But did that stop me…
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