Bad habits

Everybody has a bad habit, whether it be leaving your washed clothes in the washing machine until the next day so that they come out smelling like wet dogs, or ending every meal with a chocolate donut. Whatever your bad habit may be, it's something that you've so comfortable doing that breaking it as difficult and painful as pulling teeth.

Some habits aren't life-threatening or particularly dangerous to our health. Abandoning your socks under the kitchen table might get you into trouble with your housemates, but it won't result in any injuries. (This really may depend on what kind of forgiving people you live with.) If you have the habit of repeating yourself, you might find yourself short of conversation partners but that's about the extent of the negative reaction that you'll get to this annoying habit.

Then again, there are bad habits which really do harm to our health and put us at risk of becoming ill, developing diseases, or detract from our quality of life. At first you may start out sipping a glass of wine with your dinner at night, but soon find yourself adding a beer to breakfast, vodka to lunch, and need some rum or brandy to help you sleep at night. What was once a conscious choice now turns into an addictive repetitive action that is extremely difficult to put an end to. Smoking is also highly addictive and, depending on the stress level, those cigarettes really tend to multiply during the day. Gambling ranks high on the list of addictive bad habits that does have the potential to damage your physical health as well as your mental health.

Knowing that you have a bad habit doesn't necessarily make it easy to break. There are a number of reasons for why you seem unable to pull away from the vicious cycle that you've gotten yourself into. In some cases, it's because you are being innately defiant of the rules imposed by society, or maybe you don't really understand how harmful your bad habit is to your health. There are also those people who rationalize their habits and make excuses for them. In perhaps a worst case scenario, you may have a genetic disposition to addiction, which makes it seem impossible to conquer.

How you tackle your bad habit is dependant on your ability to identify that you do indeed have a problem, and your willingness to confront and overcome it. Some helpful things that you can do to break your bad habit is by first identifying it and being conscious of when and why it occurs. Keep a log so that you'll be able to track your progress as your bad habit lessens and eventually disappears or you are able to get it under control. Set goals for yourself so that you know what it is that you'd like to accomplish in both the short-term and long-term. Make sure that your goals are realistic and gradual so that the sudden loss of one bad habit doesn't inspire a new one. If you recognize that your bad habit is highly addictive and/or detrimental to your health, it might be a good idea to seek out a counselor, self-help group, or the support of your family and friends.