When you’ve got a bad habit, it can be more than difficult to break. But it could be essential to your success or business to make it stop.
After all, bad habits are the sneaky masters that prevent you from reaching your goals.
So how can you even get started?
Think about it this way – your habits define who you are as a person and a professional. You want to have good habits in order to steer your way right to success.
Your bad habits are more than just the bumps in the road that can stall you from getting there. Habits are powerful factors and it can be difficult to make and break them.
The key: control.
Like most things, it’s going to take some hard work and self-discipline. Results aren’t going to come overnight. But once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. You’re there to stay so stick with us!
Let’s take a better look at habits.
How? Why? When?
How Bad Habits are Formed?
Habits are formed from one place – our behavior. They are the byproducts of how we act, developed over countless instances. You wake up one day and do a certain action, then go about your day.
You wake up the following day, do that action again, and then continue your day.
After you do this for a few days, it begins to stick with you.
Which could be a good thing, if you’re getting up and your action is exercising.
But it could be a bad habit if you get up, blow off your responsibilities for an hour or two and then go about your day.
Most people crave routine. Why? Because routine equals predictable. And when we hear the word predictable, we automatically think of the word safe.
Since the process of forming a habit takes some time, it works on the other side too – breaking a bad habit takes time, too.
The best way to break a bad habit: Replace it with something else. A good habit.
Developing a good one
Replacing your Bad Habit with a Good One
Let’s say every day, you pack yourself a healthy lunch. But most days, you end up going out to lunch. Not only does this cost more money, but odds are, it takes up more of your time.
That’s time you could be spending improving your business or getting closer to your goals.
A lot of people make the mistake of quitting cold turkey. This dramatic change usually doesn’t stick and people tend to fall back into their old ways.
So keep it small.
If you go out to lunch three times a week, tell yourself you’ll only go out to lunch twice this week. Keep this up for a few weeks and then cut yourself back to one day a week.
If you’re trying to create a new habit, you want to make sure it occurs each and every day. All it takes is one missed day to completely set you back. And then you have to start all over again.
Eventually, your new habit becomes a huge part of your routine. And before you know it, you’ll be doing it without even thinking about it, which is exactly what you want to happen.
Routine and repetitive behavior are what you need.
Breaking a bad one
We’ll say this now – you can’t really get rid of a bad habit completely. Instead, you should try to replace it.
Why? Because, even though it has been deemed as a bad habit, it’s technically still bringing some kind of benefit into your life.
So replace that bad habits with a habit that has a similar impact on your life.
For example, if you surf the Internet after your lunch break, you don’t need to stop doing that completely.
Instead, try to replace it with reading you can relate back to your industry or field. This way, you’re still giving yourself what you want – browsing through articles and reading – but it’s more positive and it serves an actual purpose.
The best way to do this? Plan ahead, plan ahead, plan ahead.
When you have a habit, odds are it happens every single day. That means it happens 365 days a year. And that’s a lot.
That also means you’ve got some time to plan ahead, so you can plan what you want to replace it with.
Going in with a plan of attack of how you’ll respond promotes good habits forming. What do you plan to do when you want to read after lunch? What are you going to do when social media is calling your name? Make a game plan and stick to it.
A simple way to make sure you stick with it – get rid of any little reminders or trigger items that go along with the bad habits.
If you go out to lunch and then sit on your computer and surf the web when you get back, don’t leave your desk. Take your lunch at your desk. If you check your phone all morning for personal texts and social media, leave your phone in the car.
Environmental factors make it waaaaay too easy for your bad habit to stick around – and harder for good habits to stick. So change up the environment to change up the outcome.
What if I break?
Make it easier to break bad habits by making it harder to do the actual habit.
Make sense?
Recruit some help
Nothing is quite as successful as getting people on your team to help you out. A lot of people do things on their own, so no one gives them a hard time when they give up or when they fail.
But that can work in your favor. Getting someone on the same page as you doubles the chances of becoming successful. Why? Because both of you are celebrating victories and making sure the other is responsible when they stray from the path.
After all, when someone expects you to be better and break your bad habits, it serves as a boost of motivation – you don’t want to let that person down.
If you don’t feel comfortable counting on one person, surround yourself with others who want to have similar habits. While you shouldn’t completely dump your old friends, it’s time to get some new ones.
You might have a friend who demonstrates some pretty great business practices after work that you want to pick up on. The more you hang around this person, the more likely it is you’ll develop similar characteristics. And the more likely you’ll apply these behaviors in your every day life. x
You can help yourself succeed, too! So many motivational speakers tell you to envision yourself succeeding at something. Picture it in your mind – visualize yourself keeping your phone in your car or reading a business-related article. Whatever bad habit you’re trying to break, picture yourself doing it, then smiling and reveling in your ability to take a step toward success.
Remember your goals
Don’t try and change yourself into someone you aren’t. That’s not the goal of breaking the bad habits. Instead, just go back to the person you were before that habit. You don’t need to change yourself into a working machine, you just need to go back to being focused and driven.
Need a way to get yourself over all the negative talk? All you have to do is transform a sentence or two.
If you say:
“I haven’t been focusing on my work at all lately…”
Add “but” and finish the rest of it:
“…but I’m working toward getting my focus back.
Stay positive and don’t beat yourself up anything. You’re going to fail sometimes and guess what – that’s OK. Everyone messes up and fails from time to time. So make sure you plan for it.
The worst thing you can do is completely give up once you get off track. What separates the successful people from the less-successful people is this: Successful people plan for failure, accept it, then get right back on track, working toward their goal.
Getting started
So get started breaking that bad habit and replacing it with a good one. Here’s what you should do from here.
Ask yourself the following questions to help boost your change:
– At what point/time/place does the bad habit happen?
– About how many times does it occur during the day?
– Are you with anyone specific when it does happen?
– Are there any certain elements that jumpstart it?
Just recognizing the answers to these problems can help you change the behavior – and it’ll give you some ideas on the best methods to fix it.
Keep track of how many times your habit happens during a normal day. You can carry a pen and paper with you to make it even more convenient. Then, every time you find yourself doing the bad habits, track it.
At the end of the day, you’ll be able to count how many times you did the bad habit.
This awareness of not only how many times it happens but when it happens help you understand that you need to break it.
Even if you aren’t successful right away (most people aren’t!), keep up with trying to break your bad habits. Whether you want to quit cold turkey or replace it with a new one, do whatever it takes to reach your goal.
It can be hard to quit your bad habits but if you keep at it and don’t give up when you face cravings of your bad habits then you will get rid of your bad habits forever.
What are some of your bad habits that you currently do (or used to do)? How did you manage to replace them with good habits?
If you need anymore help with getting rid of your bad habits then drop us a comment in the section below and I will get back to you.
If you want more advice on getting rid of bad habits then check out Steve Scott’s Blog on developing good habits.
