Breaking Bad Habits

We all have bad habits, we all do things we wish we didn't do, that we know we shouldn't do, and yet we do them anyway. We eat too much junk food, we are perpetually disorganized, we bite our fingernails, we watch daytime television. We do these things so often, that they become nearly automatic, nearly involuntary--we don't think about doing them, we just do it. Then we get frustrated with ourselves because we just can't seem to kick the habit.

The First Step

The first step to kicking a bad habit is to recognize, and know the habit. I don't just mean to realize you keep letting your laundry pile in your living room until you have a scale size model of the Himalayas going. I mean recognizing the habit itself, recognizing what motivates you to do it, and recognizing the cost of doing it (i.e. why you wish you didn't do it). In the case of your laundry and living room, you might do it because not putting the laundry away leaves more time for other tasks. But are those tasks really more important? Or if your habit is junk food consumption, maybe you find that mostly you eat junk food because you are bored, not because you are hungry. Finding the motivation of the behavoir is critical--and there is always a motivation of some kind, that is simply the way human beings function.

Weighing the Cost

The next thing you have to do is simple cost-benefit analysis. Is the extra time spent browsing celebrity gossip sites online worth the mess in the living room? Is the oreo cookie cure for boredom worth the extra twenty pounds on your waist? If you've labeled something a bad habit, odds are that when you get to this stage you will conclude that the habit is not worth the cost--otherwise it would probably be a good habit.

Taking Action

The next step is to take action. Here is where one person will vary from the next. How you take action depends largely on you, and your specific bad habit. Start small, with steps you know you can take, and build up towards kicking the habit completely. If the laundry mountains in your living room are your problem, then on the first day spend an extra five minutes putting some of it away first before rushing off to whatever was calling you so strongly. If junk food is your problem, for the first week, skip one junk food urge per day--go read a magazine, watch a tv show, anything but eat for 30 min. For the second week skip two junk food urges per day. Each week increase the number you skip by one until you reach your target consumption level. The key is to not try to make massive changes that will frustrate you and make you want to give up if you fail. Better to make smaller, easier steps so that you are constantly motivated by the progress you make in kicking the habit.

You can kick any habit you want--its just a question of building the right program to help yourself quit. Work with small steps that you can easily accomplish, and keep moving one step at a time. Take some time every morning to remind yourself why you are doing it, what step you are on, and when you want to move to the next step. Before you know it, you'll have kicked that habit and will be wondering what was so hard about it.