“It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them”- Benjamin Franklin.
People are mostly drawn to us because of our characters, and this shows in the way we relate with others on a professional level and a personal one.
No one likes to interact with a person who is known for their bad behavior: this is why we must know how to develop good habits in life. Good habits like punctuality, reliability, and kindness draw others to us, while bad habits like deceit and dishonesty repel others from us.
To know how to build good habits and break bad ones, you must be able to form new habits. And to form new habits, you must consciously put in the time to learn healthy habits to do every day.
We know habit formation is a difficult task for most people, so we have taken the time to help you identify different ways to build new habits.
1. Know Your Triggers
Identifying what triggers your habitual behaviors is the first step in knowing how to build good habits and break bad ones. Spend some time to track your habits and see if they follow any patterns.
If you’re nicer after a particular chore or when you’re with a particular person, continue to do that chore and stay with that person more often.
Similarly, some bad behaviors usually surface in response to some situations: bad habits like uncontrollable temper or lying can usually be traced to a situation in which you’re trying to protect yourself.
Therefore, to prevent yourself from lying or breaking into a temper, avoid such situations completely. It may also be a particular person that triggers your bad habits, identify them, and avoid them.
This also applies to other smaller behaviors, like staying up past midnight: take time to consciously identify what it is that keeps you up late at night, and try to stay away from it.
For example, if watching TV is what keeps you up so late, remove all electronic devices from your bedroom so that when it is bedtime, you don’t have any access to the television. This is a reliable technique if you want to know how to build good habits and break bad ones.
2. Identify The Behavior You Want To Change
To know how to build good habits and break bad ones, you must be able to identify each of them. You should be able to differentiate each of your habits and identify which one can be beneficial to you in whatever scenario.
Thinking you have bad habits is not enough to change them, you must know exactly the behaviors that you want to change. Robert Taibbi, a licensed clinical social worker wrote that “You need to prime the habit-breaking process by thinking in terms of specific behaviors – like not dumping your shoes in the living room but putting them in the closet; not eating in front of the TV but at the dining table; going for a half-hour run five days a week….”.
3. Take One Step At A Time
Building good and new habits take time and effort but breaking bad habits is even more strenuous. Therefore, if you’re constantly thinking of how to build good habits and break new ones, it may quickly become overwhelming.
This is why when you are trying to build good habits, you must be patient with yourself. Try focusing on one habit at a time so you don’t get yourself worked up with slow progress.
For example: with food and dieting, small changes like reducing one pack of sugar or switching cream in your coffee to low-fat milk can make a big difference in the long run, and may inspire additional small but meaningful changes.
You may be excited to quickly get rid of the bad habits and build good ones as soon as possible but as they say “good things don’t come easy”. As long as you have identified the bad habits, just take one step at a time, and be easy on yourself.
4. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness means paying attention on purpose, at the moment, and non-judgmentally. Mindfulness helps you to purposefully develop awareness around your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Practicing mindfulness can help you notice ways your habit affects your daily life. And as you become more aware of these habits and what triggers them, it becomes easier to avoid these triggers. Some ways to practice mindfulness are:
- Do breathing exercises.
- Run through your day in your mind, think about the habits you exhibit and what causes you to exhibit them or what triggers them.
- Think about some new habits to try.
- Think about the effects of these new habits on your life and your relationship with others.
As you start to recognize these effects, you may feel more driven to work on changing the habit. This, in turn, will help you understand how to build good habits and break bad ones.
5. Continuously Motivate Yourself With Why You Want To Change
To know how to build good habits and break bad ones, you must continuously motivate yourself.
And the best way to do this is to visualize how fulfilled you would be when you eventually overcome these bad habits.
Visualization is a strong tool for motivation and it plays a big role in the achievement of your goals. Visualization also keeps you going especially on those days when the urge to give up is strong.
For example: if you are struggling with the habit of alcoholism, and you feel the need to drink, you could visualize how much better life would be without it. You could also visualize how fulfilled you would feel if you were able to overcome alcoholism.
6. Replace These Bad Habits With Good Ones
Usually, we cultivate habits to fill a vacuum in us. Hence, we cannot successfully change a bad habit without replacing it with a good one.
If you’ve been repeatedly told that you behave unpleasantly, you should find out what it is that makes people see you that way because most times, you may not be aware of it.
To replace a bad habit with a good one, try to repeatedly carry out the good habit. Be aware of yourself and whenever you feel the urge to behave in a bad manner, do a good thing instead.
It will take a lot of time and a lot of practice, but if you do it consistently, you would notice that the good habit would have replaced the bad one.
Also, there are some habits that we may misinterpret as good when in reality, they are bad and harmful to others. To be able to successfully replace bad habits, we must know the behaviors needed in our environment; that is, the daily habits to improve life.
7. Be Mentally Prepared For Slipups
As I’ve stated earlier, nothing good comes easy. This is why when you decide that you want to know how to build good habits and break ones, you must be prepared for those days when you would find yourself doing the things you promised not to do anymore.
You must be mentally prepared for slipups and be ready to motivate yourself to continue your journey of breaking bad habits and not giving up. To help, you can try reading articles on habits or reaching out to a friend who you know overcame that same bad habit.
8. Change Your Environment
The environment is a catalyst for our growth. In the same vein, it contributes to our habits and lifestyle. Your environment is mainly made up of the people who surround you, and this is usually your family and friends.
Your family can trigger some of your bad habits and if you continue to stay with them, you would continue to exhibit these habits.
To know how to build good habits and break bad ones, you must be able to correctly identify your environment as good or bad. If your environment is good, it helps you create good habits and vice versa. Therefore, you can only successfully break away from those habits when you change your environment.
9. Celebrate Little Wins
In life, some achievements seem as though they don’t count. Regardless of how small the win may seem, a win remains a win.Celebrating little wins is a giant step in the direction of knowing how to build good habits and break bad ones.
Also, when admiring the huge win of others, we tend to forget that it is a combination of various small wins.
Celebrating your small wins makes you feel good about yourself and it reminds you that you matter. It also propels you to take a leap and do better. A good habit that instills this in us is showing gratitude.
10. Be Accountable
In breaking bad habits, you must be accountable to a trusted individual. You should tell them about your struggles with the habit, how it has affected you, the difficulty in breaking free from such habit, and your resolve to eventually break free.
The purpose of accountability is that you’re able to report your progress to such a person, and he/she gives you the much-needed encouragement to keep pushing.
Also, when you slip up, you report to such a person who then reminds you of the real reason you wanted to break free, which keeps you going.
To know how to build good habits and break bad ones, you need to be consistent. It is not a day’s job and you will not see progress if you don’t actively put in the effort.
Also, knowing how to build good habits and break bad ones is one thing, but carrying out the act is another. It is usually terribly difficult because you are already comfortable doing what you are used to, and as the saying goes, “Old habits die hard.”
If you are known as a good person, and a role model for good character, you should keep it up. But you must still try to reduce the number of bad habits since this can greatly limit your potential and shed you in a bad light.
The only thing constant is change, and as humans, we must continuously improve ourselves. To do that, you must find healthy habits to do every day.
