When it comes to breaking bad habits, it can often be a long, hard road. After all, we’re only human, and humans are prone to making mistakes and bad choices. But that doesn’t mean you can’t break the cycle and start to make better choices and eliminate your bad habits once and for all.
The crux is to find an approach that works for you for long-term success, not short-term highs. With this in mind, this post looks at some tips on how you can break bad habits and make better, more positive life choices.
Identify Your Triggers
Before you even begin to change your habits and improve your decision-making, you need to identify why you make the choices you do and what triggers you to do them. It could be a case of boredom causing you to overeat and grab unhealthy snacks or needing an alcoholic drink or three to wind down after work every night. Once you identify how and when your habits come into play or are exacerbated, you can then look at how to change them.
Start Small
We’ve all seen the adverts, especially for people losing weight on going cold turkey, throwing out everything that is bad for you and starting as you mean to go on. For some people, this will immediately set them up for failure. Instead, start small. Make small changes and then celebrate those little wins. For example, it could be swapping one unhealthy snack daily for a healthier version for a week and then building on that. Or it could be committing to smoking fewer cigarettes each day to help you acclimate easier on the path to quitting.
Set Small Goals
Tying into the above point, setting small goals is often more manageable than giving yourself what might seem like an unreachable target. Let’s say you want to start exercising regularly; committing to intense workouts 5 days a week might be too much to sustain in the long term once the initial novelty wears off. Instead, why not aim for 20 minutes of exercise or additional daily movement, or go for a walk over two weeks? Then once you have completed this, you can set a different goal, such as joining the gym and or an exercise class and going once or twice on top of your walking and so on until you get to where you want to be.
Get Professional Help
Many bad habits that people form are actually addictions. These addictions can vary and often be extremely difficult to break alone with sheer willpower. If you want to quit drinking or taking drugs or address other medications such as gambling or eating disorders getting support from people who know exactly what you’re going through as you can get at Warriors Heart can support the changes you want to make. Alternatively, you can talk to a therapist, counsellor, support groups and even family and friends to help you get the help and support you need to meet your goals.
Conclusion
Breaking habits can be challenging, and it won’t happen overnight. It’s not a linear process, and you can expect to hit some bumps in the road, but with the proper support and mindset, you can support yourself to get to where you want to be in no time.
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