7 Simple Ways to Change a Bad Habit
By: Wendy Miller
Tags: Habits, Lifestyle, Transformation, Life Hacking, Self

Before the pandemic, I had started eating way too much sugar again. I was beginning to get headaches again, both regular ones and migraines, but even those weren’t enough to convince me to give up sugar. I had to find the motivation within myself to kick the sugar.

We all have bad habits. Smoking, biting our nails, staying up way too late or hitting snooze when the alarm goes off, reaching for junk food, or a million other things.

The good news is that most of us are aware of our bad habits and don’t really want to keep engaging in them. The bad news is that we’ve gotten the message that changing habits is hard. Really hard. Like practically impossible hard.

And in all honesty, it is really hard, practically impossible hard, for some of us. We get into a comfort zone. We know what we’re doing isn’t good for us, isn’t healthy, isn’t right, but it’s easier to keep doing it than to change it. It’s easier to stick with what we know, what’s familiar, than to step into the unknown of a new habit.

But it doesn’t have to be that hard. There are things you can do that will make it a little easier to break a habit. And the first step is knowing that it takes 18 to 254 days to create a new habit. So don’t beat yourself up when it doesn’t happen overnight.

Identify your “Why”

Why do you want to break this bad habit? Why do you want to form a new good habit? What is your motivation?

The specific motivation can be anything. Maybe you want to lose weight so you can play with your kids or be around for your grandkids. Maybe you want to quit smoking because your father died of lung cancer. Maybe you want to stop eating sugar and start eating healthier foods because you get headaches or don’t sleep well.

Your “Why” is yours. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big reason or a small one, an important one or one that someone else would say is silly. What matters is that it is enough to motivate you.

Identify your “Why” and keep it at the front of your mind.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Have someone else hold you accountable

Accountability, or knowing that someone else will be checking up on you or depending on you, can also be a motivator when we’re trying to change things. This accountability can take many forms.

You might tell your doctor you’re trying to lose weight because you’re pre-diabetic. They may hold you accountable by having you come in so they can check your weight more often.

Or you might ask a friend to walk with you every day if you’re looking to make being more active a habit. Maybe you’ll ask your kids to remind you of their graduation date if they see you going to smoke.

By getting someone else in on your habit change, you give yourself some external motivation — one that you can’t just ignore. Letting people down makes most people feel bad and once we’ve asked them for help, most of us also don’t want to tell them to stop.

While shame, embarrassment, and a fear of letting people down may not be ideal motivators, if it works, it works.

Give yourself reminders

Alarms on your phone. Appointments on your calendar that pop up. Sticky notes on a door, mirror, or appliance. Photos of a thinner, healthier you on the fridge. There are lots of ways you can remind yourself of the change you’re trying to make.

Whatever reminders you choose, give yourself plenty of them. Habits are habits for a reason. We’re comfortable in them, they’re easy, and they don’t require a lot from us. So without reminders, you might find that you quickly forget the change you wanted to make.

And when you do remember, you might shrug and decide it’s not worth it anymore.

With frequent, visible reminders, you’ll keep the change you want to make at the front of your mind. This keeps you focused on the plan, the path ahead of you, and determined to see success.

Identify any triggers associated with the habit

Maybe you smoke after every meeting with your boss. Maybe you reach for a candy bar every day at 3 p.m. because your energy slumps and it keeps you going. Maybe you overeat every time you talk to your ex.

Find the triggers, if there are any, associated with your habit. Once you identify the triggers, you can change the trigger or change how you react to it.

You can take a minute to breathe deeply after the meetings with your boss. You can take a walk around the office to boost your energy in the afternoon. You can meditate after talking to your ex — or find a different way to communicate so they can’t stress you out as much.

Whether you change the trigger or just how you react to it, change is change. Changing your reaction is changing your bad habit. Changing the trigger will result in a change to the habit because if you’re not triggering the bad habit, you’ll have to deliberately choose to engage in it. And if you make that deliberate choice, you’ll know you have some deeper work to do.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

Track it

Tracking can be great for changing habits. It allows you to visually see your progress or lack thereof.

There are two ways you can track.

You can track each time you engage in your new good habit instead of the old bad one. This can be good for something like working out daily or eating a healthy meal. It’s best for those things that only happen a few times a day or more rarely than that.

Another option is to track each time you engage in the bad habit. This can be effective if you’re still not totally convinced of the need to change or for something you engage in multiple times a day, such as smoking or eating candy.

It allows you to see just how often you engage in this bad habit, which can be eye-opening. It also allows you to see your progress as you track fewer and fewer instances of the bad habit — and that can make you feel like you’re making more progress. Finally, if you engage in the bad habit often enough, it can get so annoying to have to track it every time you do it that you stop doing it as much just so you don’t have to track it as often.

Visualize life after the change

Visualization can be a powerful tool for change. Your mind can’t always tell the difference between something you imagine and the real thing. So when you imagine what life will be like after you make the change, your mind will help you really feel it. Those feelings can be a strong motivation to get busy on change and stick with it.

It doesn’t have to be difficult to do this either. Just sit down, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Then see yourself going through a day with your new habit. Maybe you imagine life without having to go outside in the rain or blazing heat to smoke, or being able to run a mile without feeling like you’re dying and your entire body aching. Maybe you imagine playing with your kids or holding your first grandchild.

Allow this vision to fully surround you. Try to see, hear, smell, and feel as much as you can. Give this vision as much texture and reality as possible.

Be willing to start over when you slip up

How many times have you, or someone you know, started a diet on Monday morning, and when you slipped up on Tuesday or Wednesday, gave up? Or decided to start working out daily and then when you missed one day, then another, just shrugged and decided not to bother anymore? Or decided to quit smoking, and then when you had one borrowed cigarette, decided all was lost and you might as well buy a pack?

They say habits are hard to break for a reason: they are hard to break. You’re going to slip up sometimes. Probably more than once or twice. So cut yourself some slack.

Be willing to start over when you slip up. Be willing to chalk this one moment in time up to a lost cause, but get right back on track. This one meal might be unhealthy, but you can make the next one better. You might have missed today’s workout, but there’s always tomorrow to start again. You might have given in to stress and smoked one cigarette, but you can resolve that it won’t happen again.

No one is perfect. And no one can expect perfection from you, whether it’s someone else or you yourself, in changing a habit. Instead of perfection, seek doing better. Doing better more often than you engage in the bad habit. Doing better the next time.

That’s all anyone can ask of you — including yourself.

Wendy Miller is a Certified Happiness Coach, freelance writer & meditation teacher. After years of settling for abusive and otherwise toxic relationships, she got fed up. Using meditation and other tools, she got to work on healing herself, setting boundaries, and only engaging in relationships (romantic and otherwise) that bring her joy. She wants to help other single parents find the love & happiness they seek, including and going beyond romantic love. She lives in Florida with her two sons, where she homeschools while solo parenting, while surrounded by what feels like a zooful of animals.

You can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. You can also sign up for her newsletter for exclusive tips and goodies.

You might also enjoy: