3 Steps to Help You Break Bad Habits: How to Make Changes That Last for Good!

 

Creating good habits when you’ve been practicing bad habits for such a long time is a real nail-biting predicament. Often, we end up replacing bad habits with other bad habits, turning our good intentions into a cycle of failed attempts to better ourselves. How can we break that vicious cycle and make some real progress to become the best version of ourselves?

There is hope y’all! We’re not doomed to repeat the same mistakes for eternity, but we need to be willing to put in the work, plain and simple.

Here are three easy steps to help you get started on your journey to breaking those habits that we know aren’t doing us any good…

That old saying, “Put pen to paper, get the ball rolling,” is adherently true when you are planning an overhaul of your mindset. If you want to get something done, you must start at point A before point B. There’s a system in place and you only cheat yourself if you attempt to take the shortcut.

DON’T CHEAT YOURSELF!

Step 1. Write a list of your bad habits.

We all have a ton of things we currently do that we wish we didn’t. To start, write these habits down that you want to break or change to a positive.

1.  Smoking.

2.  Spending too much time on my phone, constantly checking my emails or notifications.

3.  Living a sedentary lifestyle.

4.  Procrastinating.

5.  Over multitasking.

6.  Delegating more than doing.

7.  Worrying about things not in my control.

8.  Poor diet, skipping meals, not drinking enough water.

9.  Yelling when I’m upset or overwhelmed.

10.             Not sleeping enough or having a sleep schedule.

11.             Dwelling on negatives and the past.

12.             Not completing tasks in a timely matter.

13.             Avoiding social interactions.

14.             Overspending.

15.             Not taking time to invest in myself.

 

Step 2. Pick one bad habit to work on for the next 7 days and track your progress.

Let’s say you want to stop sleeping in and hitting that snooze button every morning. First, address why you are doing the bad habit to begin with. Maybe you are staying up to late or just not getting good quality sleep during the night. Once you have a general idea of what may be causing you to want to stay in bed after that morning alarm blares, pick an antidote. If you tend to stay up late scrolling on your phone while you’re in bed, consider charging your phone outside of your bedroom, perhaps on the kitchen counter or an end table in your living room.

Try the antidote for the next 7 days and track your progress. If you hit the goal of waking up every morning without snoozing your alarm, you are ready for step 3. If you didn’t hit all 7 days, restart until you have completed it consecutively. NO CHEATING YOURSELF!

Step 3. Add a new habit to the next 7 days.

Getting through 7 consecutive days is harder than we might think, so if you did it, CONGRATS!

Don’t stop though! Start off the second week by picking the next habit you want to tackle, say, overspending. Again, look at the factors that enable you to overspend. What are you spending on or are you just overbudgeted entirely? It could be as simple as reworking your budget or as extreme as cutting expenses or taking a second job to live within your means. If it’s something simple, such as grabbing coffee at your favorite coffee shop every morning, an easy solution would be to make your coffee at home. Of course, it’s usually more complex. A lot of times, overspending happens when we don’t track our spending. There are a few reasons this happens; we live in an evolving paperless world, less cash and checks more debit cards or virtual payments, many people don’t know how to properly reconcile or ‘balance’ their bank accounts. Tracking your income and expenses is a must, read more here on how to create a simplified budget and stick to it.

Once you pin down the culprit, plan to follow it for the next 7 days in addition to continuing your newly established ‘good habit’. Following the same rules as Step 1, if you oversleep or overspend (or whatever bad habits you chose), start Step 1 over.

See where this is headed?

Continue adding a new habit to tackle in the same manner, slowly breaking each bad habit by being repetitive and holding yourself accountable!

Once you get a few weeks into this regime, you’ll start feeling empowered to make other changes, too! But don’t tackle to much at once. It’s not about becoming a new person overnight, you are a great person already! The goal is to break that cycle of habits that aren’t inline with your happiness and goals. It takes time and tremendous effort to make these changes, and even more effort to make them permanent.

 

You’ve got this friend! Let’s create positive changes! 😊

 

xxoo

Crystal