Change Your Habits! How You Can Break Bad Habits

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We all have habits that we want to change. Maybe we tend to snack on junk food while watching TV. Perhaps we get distracted playing video games and put off chores we need to do around the house.  Whatever the habit we want to change those habits are often ingrained in brains and can be difficult to change.

Difficult to change, but not impossible. Habits are behaviors that you have done over and over again, to the point where you no longer have to think about them.  For example, you sit down to dinner and automatically salt your food. That is something you may not think about at all. You simply sit down and without thinking grab the salt and sprinkle it over your dinner. 

The more ingrained the behavior has become the more challenging it can be to change. You'll need a strategy to identify what is causing the behaviors so that you know what needs to be changed. Use these steps to break bad habits and build new ones. 

How to Change Habits

Identify the Habit

First, of course, is identifying what the habit is that you want to change. You need to look at the outcomes of your life and what is causing you to get there. If you are putting off studying for an exam, is it because you're distracted by video games? If you are not exercising is it because you're getting lost binge-watching shows on Netflix? Before you can change a bad habit you have to identify the habit you're trying to change. 

I used to snack endlessly while watching TV. It did not have a good effect on my waistline. Over the course of several years, I put 50 pounds on. I knew that I needed to lose weight so I started to look at the things I was doing that were leading to my weight gain. I was making many poor choices with my eating habits, including grabbing bags of chips or other snacks and eating them while watching TV.  I knew that if I wanted to change my habits and lose weight I would have to find a way to stop eating while watching TV.

A habit is a behavior that you have done over and over to the point where it has become automatic. 

What is Causing the Behavior

All of your habits exist in response to some sort of stimulus. For example when you walk into a dark room and the lights are off so you flip the switch. You couldn't see when you walked in but you could after flipping the switch. When you flip the switch and the lights come on your brain is happy. As a result, the behavior is reinforced. Your brain now associates flipping on the light switch with the reward of feeling happy. 

One of the keys to changing habit is to understand what trigger exists that causes the habit. For example, when I would watch TV I would be bored during commercials or see commercials for junk food. I would grab the junk food and eat it and we all know that you feel better when you eat junk food, even though later you might feel guilty. My brain, over time, learned to associate eating junk food with sitting down to watch TV. 

Behaviors are caused by triggers in your environment. Something you see, hear, feel or smell causes you to take action.

Change your environment

One of the interesting things about habits is that they can be tied to visual cues in your environment. I learned this while listening to an episode of the Art of Manliness featuring the physical trainer Bobby Maximus.  Bobby uses green dots to help people train. Placing these small visual cues in the environment remind you of what you are supposed to be doing. Bobby has found that when you see these dots they can have a large effect on your mind. For example, if you have placed a green dot on the door leading to your exercise bike, you're much more likely to walk into the room than if you didn't see that dot. 

For me, I was getting bored watching TV when commercials came on. The break in the show where commercials started playing was a visual cue, that I should go grab a snack. I needed to remove that and I did. Instead of watching live TV, I started recording shows so that I could fast forward through commercials. I upgraded my streaming services from the version of the ad to the add-free versions. Almost immediately the desire to snack while watching TV diminished. I saw no commercials and the trigger that causing me to want the junk food was gone, so I stopped getting up to grab it. 

The triggers that cause you to act exist in your environment. To change habits you have to remove the triggers leading to bad habits and add triggers for good behaviors. 

Reduce Resistance

The easier something is to do the more likely you are to do it. For example, if you want to start writing it's tough to sit down and write a novel all at once for your first project. It's easy to write something short though. Maybe not even an article, but you might start by writing something like a few sentences that summarize something you just read and want to remember. (This is a great way to start writing because it's also a great way to remember what you've read.)

Part of my strategy of taking those 50 pounds off involved getting exercise. I wanted to ride my bike. I did not start by hopping on and riding 100 miles at a time. That was too much too soon. I definitely would have quit after my first attempt. Instead, I started by riding around the block every day. That led to riding a few blocks. Then I was riding a few miles. Pretty soon I was riding 10 miles every morning before work. My time to 10 miles went from an hour to 35 minutes too. Not only did I build my habit slowly, but as I repeated it over and over I also improved my competence. 

The easier something is to do the more likely you are to do it. Start slow and build your way up to harder things.

Celebrate the Outcomes

Our brains are both complex and simple. We can do complex mathematics, art, and science that other animals on earth can't conceive of. We also have simple mechanisms that make us do things. We like the taste of salt and fat and will eat an entire bag of chips because our brain tells us that we're happy when we do it. You will tell your friends and family about your successful presentation at work because you are happy and then reinforce that by praising you.  You celebrate the outcomes.

When I was starting to ride my bike, it was as simple as telling my wife that I had ridden my bike. She told me good job and I was happy to hear it because it was brand new. Over time, telling her I rode around the block seemed silly and I needed a new way to be impressed by my performance. I downloaded an app called Strava and started tracking my rides via GPS.  Strava is a brilliant app because it taps right into the things that cause you to be motivated and built habits. It tracks your performance and tells you when you're getting better. It praises you for a job well done. It encourages you to compete against other people by riding faster through different parts of your neighborhood and shows you how fast other people have ridden through there. It has a consistent loop of showing you what you've done and praising you for doing it. If you forget to ride, Strava will even pop a notification up on your phone reminding you.  

We love to feel good about ourselves. When you do a good behavior recognize it and celebrate the success to reinforce the habit. 

Habits are hard to change, but changing them is possible. You can remove bad habits from your life and add good habits in. You have to build a strategy that understands what your bad habits are and what causes them. You need to identify the habits you want to have and what can trigger them. Make it easy and celebrate the successes and you'll be on your way to big changes in your life.

Have you ever broken a bad habit or are you still trying? I want to hear about it. Tell me below or contact me!