Discover the 7 Secrets to Breaking a Bad Habit
A bad habit is like a shackle in your life. It can be very easy to acquire but very hard to let go. If you want to break a bad habit, here are seven tips that can be helpful.
- Stay Away from the Triggers
A bad habit does not just come about. A number of factors in your life could trigger it. For instance, sex addiction could come from too much exposure to sexual content in movies and watching pornography. Relentlessly discipline yourself to avoid the triggers at all cost. Read more about triggers here
- Delay the Urge
Over time, a bad habit in a person’s life becomes second nature. It is like a reflex action. However, you can train yourself to delay the urge and think about what you are about to do. This act will slowly and gradually dissipate the urge to commit the bad act.
- Stay Consistent Day in Day out
Breaking a bad habit requires consistency on your part. You may find yourself smoking that piece of cigarette that you had made a vow never to smoke again. Don’t you get discouraged, stand up, dust yourself and remain true to the goal of breaking the bad habit. Consistency requires that you discipline yourself accordingly by totally avoiding the habit for at least three weeks.
- Withstand the Discomfort in the Process of Breaking Free
It is very hard! No need of lying to you. Breaking a bad habit has never been easy and will never be. A lot of discomfort usually accompanies the period of breaking free. This calls for patience and persistence on your part. Press past the discomfort with faith.
- Have an Alternative Behaviour
If you are used to checking your smart phone every 5 minutes even while at your workplace, you could choose to keep the smart phone out of reach for a while until you are able to complete your work. Having an alternative action to a bad habit helps you substitute the bad habit with a good habit eventually breaking free from the bad habit.
- Have a Friend Who Can Hold you Accountable
Many people who want to break a bad habit always make a promise to never partake of the habit again. However, they fail to anticipate the opposite outcome and whenever they slip and fall back into the bad habit; they hate themselves for it and resolve they cannot change. People suffering from a bad habit should avoid being perfectionists and embrace the fact that they are humans who are bound to fail. It is therefore necessary to have an accountability partner who will hold you accountable for your actions and cheer you up in the run to freedom.
- Set a SMART Goal to Breaking Your Bad Habit
SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based. For instance, you could be struggling with the habit of masturbation. You then find out that one of the triggers to masturbation is reading pornographic literature. To break the habit, it calls for setting SMART goals. You could give yourself three weeks and resolve to avoid all the triggers to the habit such as movies, pornographic content. Rather watch comedies than movies that have sexual connotations in them. The goal in itself is SMART and it will give you the impetus to soldier on.
If a person is enslaved by a bad habit, he alone has the key to break it. Without personal discipline, consistency and faith your desire to freedom might not be realized. Be happy because many have broken free and you will break free too.
