Bad habits & How to break them
10 years ago I didn’t have a job, I was lazy, slept until 1 pm, and took choices that kept me from reaching my goals. Because of this, it still feels like I haven’t accomplished much in my life. I reached my mid-20s before I started reading books again. One of these books was a self-help book that helped me put myself together and get on the right path. Now I can’t go a day without my morning walks. I set the alarm to 6 am and read while I eat my breakfast — every other book I read is a nonfiction book. I have read almost every self-help book there is.
Breaking bad habits takes time, but it isn’t impossible. Experience has taught me that motivation is a skill that must be learned, not necessarily something you have to wait for.
I have made a list of easy exercises that’ll help you break the bad habits, but first, let’s take a look at how manipulative your brain is.
The power of habits
You can find habits in almost anything you do. I bet you can drive a car while eating a hamburger because driving has become a habit. Maybe you always bite your fingernails (or toenails — hey, I don’t judge) while watching a movie, or maybe you put your socks on before you put your pants on. That’s a habit too. Then there are the bad habits: Smoking, eating unhealthy food, or drinking one too many beers every day. Dopamine neurons are activated during this type of rewarding brain stimulation. In other words, your brain loves you for doing this.
Since the modern brain evolved somewhere between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago, it hasn’t been able to keep up with the rapidly changing environment. Back then, food and water were a matter of survival. Finding sweet sugary fruits and food high in calories, and the ability to light a fire was just as rewarding as winning 1 million dollars in today’s world. The brain rewarded people with good feelings and happiness. This encouraged them to repeat the process.
The same happens today, but instead of eating food to survive, most of us eat because we can’t help it and because it’s easily accessible. Your brain is a sneaky bastard who always seems to place a bag of chips on your lap when you aren’t looking.
The brain is a shoulder devil
The brain is like a shoulder devil who tells you what to do, even though you know it’s bad. In one study from 2010, researchers found that the smokers who tried to quit smoking just smoked even more. If you tell yourself not to smoke ever again, your brain will keep repeating the word smoke or cigarettes again and again until you give up. Compare it to when you get to bed in the evening. It’s warm and comfortable, but suddenly you can’t remember if you peed. As you try to remember, you think about it more and more, until you have to go. Most of us are too easily manipulated.
It’s not completely wrong to say humans aren’t perfect. We don’t have to be, either. But we can try to be better and make more sensible choices.
6 ways to break bad habits
- Start with the really bad habits first. By this, I mean habits that are unhealthy. You can live with nail-biting, but drinking 10 cans of soda every day isn’t good for you. By battling your worst habits first, you’ll get motivated to further change your life for the better.
- Be specific about what you want to change. If you want to start exercising, it isn’t enough to say you want to start doing it. Ask yourself why do you want to exercise. What can you do right now to motivate yourself? (Don’t just wait for the “right time”) Would it help to place your running shoes by the front door?
- Make things harder for yourself. If you want to eat healthier, throw out all the unhealthy food/snacks, or make it harder for yourself to get to the candy by placing it in the back of the top shelf. If you’re trying the quit smoking, give all your cigarettes to your family, so you have to ask for them when the urge appears. There’s a fun idea on Lifehacker: “You can reward yourself for not doing it or you can punish yourself for doing it […] with the “swear jar” method. The punishment is that you lose out on your spending money, but you still get the hidden reward of saving some cash.”
- Write a journal. Don’t look at this as a diary. Use it to manage your habits. Write down your progress. You only have to do this for 30 days to track your improvements. When the 30 days are over, you can keep writing or use the journal as a motivational booster.
- Go for a run/walk. If everything fails, run like your life depends on it. Run away from all the temptations. Enjoy nature, get some fresh air, and think about something else. It helps to keep yourself active instead of sitting at home thinking about all the things you aren’t allowed to do.
- Reward yourself. As we talked about in the beginning, the brain loves rewards. Therefore, it’s important to find ways to reward yourself for replacing the bad habit with something better. This little trick helps your brain learn that the new habit is just as rewarding as the old one. Eg. if you succeeded in quitting cigarettes, reward yourself by going to a restaurant with the money you saved.
You can do it
It can be difficult to change a habit, so take it slow. You don’t have to break every bad habit in an hour. This will only stress you out. Also, don’t punish yourself for relapsing once in a while — it’s more normal than you think. Accept the relapse, take a deep breath, and keep at it. Remember why you wanted to change in the first place. You only fail if you give up.
