4 Tips For Finally Breaking Your Worst Habits
Bad habits – we’ve all experienced them in some form and we all know how difficult it can be to break them from our routines. Whether your vice is staying up all night checking social media, leaving all your studying for the night before your exam or biting your nails, it’s completely normal to feel helpless in the face of potentially harmful behaviours. The first step to overcoming this obstacle is to understand why your subconscious mind holds on to these bad habits even though you understand they’re not good for you on a superficial level.
“Habits play a big role in our health,” Dr Nora Volkow, director of the UK’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, tells News in Heath. “Understanding the biology of how we develop routines that can be harmful to us and how to break those routines and adopt new ones, could help us change our lifestyle and adopt healthier behaviours.” Dr. Volkow explains that habits are typically formed through repetition, but University of Texas at Austin neurologist Dr. Russell Poldrack reveals to the outlet that they are also formed by triggering the release of dopamine, commonly known as the brain’s “feel-good” hormone. “If you do something over and over again, and the dopamine is there while you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more,” he shares. “When you’re not doing those things, the dopamine creates the desire to do it again.”
While breaking even the most harmful habits is difficult, it’s certainly not impossible. There are several techniques you can apply to make the process easier, including understanding why you’re breaking the habit and introducing healthier replacement habits. You may have some hiccups along the way — if you ever slip back into your old bad habits, just remember to get back on the horse and try again.
Get clear on the motivation behind your habit change
Quitting bad habits is so tricky because of the hormonal activity in our brains – when something triggers the release of dopamine, we want to do it again and again. But one powerful way to counteract this is to get clarity on why you want to break that habit. A 2013 study in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine suggests that people are more likely to stick with behavior changes if they can see the value or personal benefit in them. If you’re consciously trying to quit a habit because you know it will benefit you, not someone else’s expectations, you’ll be more motivated to persevere.
There may be more than one reason you want to break a particular habit, so write them all down so that motivation is crystal clear in your mind. Some reasons may be more pressing than others, so keep reminding yourself of them when you’re tempted to return to that behavior. For example, if you’re trying to stop eating chocolate before bed, your reasons for quitting may range from feeling sick while you sleep to preventing weight gain or tooth decay. Health reasons are likely to be more pressing, so focus on those.
Interestingly, it can also be helpful to write down the reasons you want to keep up the bad habit. Registered psychotherapist Natacha Duke, M.A., R.P., told the Cleveland Clinic that you can gain even more clarity if you’re honest about what makes it so hard to kick the habit: “If you don’t acknowledge your ambivalence, it’s going to be hard to make true, lasting changes.” Your reasons for keeping up your chocolate habit might include that it tastes good and makes you feel good briefly. Weigh those reasons against your reasons for quitting to weigh what’s really important to you.
Aim to swap your bad habit for a healthier alternative
When we deprive ourselves of a bad habit that we’ve come to enjoy, like eating chocolate before bed, that lack of dopamine release is noticeable. That effect is amplified when we have nothing to replace the habit with. Your brain will surely notice and resist the missing bad habit, but introducing a new, healthier alternative can alleviate some of those uncomfortable feelings. “It doesn’t work for everyone,” Dr. Nora Volkow shares with News in Health, revealing that this technique can be particularly helpful in the case of drug addiction. “But certain groups of patients who have a history of severe addiction may engage in certain behaviors that are ritualistic and somewhat compulsive, like running marathons, and it helps them stay away from drugs. These alternative behaviors can counteract the urges to repeat a behavior in order to take a drug.”
For the best results, you may want to choose a healthy alternative that is still enjoyable. Replacing your nightly chocolate fix with celery is probably going to be hard to maintain, so you might opt for a low-sugar treat that still tastes good. Or, if you tend to reach for a glass of wine when you’re feeling stressed, find other stress-relieving activities that don’t involve alcohol, like doing a quick meditation or watching baby animal videos. Keep in mind that simply learning new habits won’t automatically remove old ones from your routine. Making an effort to replace your old habits only makes the process easier to manage as you resist dipping back into those unhealthy behaviors. In general, it takes between 18 and 254 days to develop new, lasting habits.
Practice mindfulness when bad habits arise
Mindfulness has been increasingly popular since the 90s, when Westerners started to really embrace the idea. Simply put, mindfulness is about being present and passively observing everything about the moment you’re in. There are also specific types of mindfulness, such as mindful eating, where you really focus on your food. According to psychiatry professor Dr. Jud Brewer, MD, PhD, an expert on both habit change and mindfulness, this practice can help us let go of habits that no longer serve us.
Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Dr. Brewer explains that the key to habit change is understanding that habits are usually formed because our brains find that behavior rewarding, so self-control is often not enough to make us stop doing it. Instead, we have to be aware of that feeling of “reward” we experience when we engage in these habits. By practicing mindfulness, we can explore that feeling and eventually develop a more accurate view of it. Then, the habit becomes easier to break. If you’re a total beginner, there are some great mindfulness and meditation apps that will help you master them.
Dr. Brewer notes that the first step is to identify the triggers that lead to the habit you want to change. Maybe your overeating is preceded by feelings of sadness, or maybe you endlessly scroll through social media because thinking about work fills you with dread. Then, do some self-analysis while you’re engaging in those behaviors, and also shortly afterward. As you overeat or doom-scroll, observe your body and notice how it feels, physically and mentally. In particular, Dr. Brewer recommends thinking about how it feels to know that the behavior, while it may be rewarding in the moment, is preventing you from achieving certain goals. Get as clear as possible about the negative consequences of those habits, from feeling physically full to regretting wasting your time. The next time the habit comes up, respond with curiosity rather than giving in. Noticing how the urge feels and consciously analyzing it is also rewarding, so it can also help you get rid of that habit altogether.
Limit choice and temptation
This last tip is a more practical, hard-nosed approach to quitting bad habits. Instead of trying to practice self-control or retrain your brain to not want to continue the habit, you focus on eliminating the opportunity to do so. Then, whether you like it or not, you won’t be able to maintain the habit. For example, if your bad habit is eating chocolate late at night, you simply won’t be able to do it if there’s no chocolate in the house. “Force yourself to go out and buy it, creating a boundary or obstacle,” board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Sue Varma tells Today.
You can also go a step further and limit your choices when it comes to bad habits. Instead of telling yourself that you’ll decide whether or not to get rid of the list of bad things based on how you feel later, automatically decide that you won’t get rid of the list of bad things and let that be the end of it. “Choice is the enemy of a habit because you’re leaving it up to whim, willpower, and discipline,” Dr. Varma continues. “There are too many variables involved, like energy, interest, other people, discipline, motivation.” The psychiatrist explains that if you leave it up in the air, these factors can easily creep in and throw you off course, adding, “Make [habit change] non-negotiable and it will become an automated habit.”
While this approach doesn’t eliminate your craving or tendency toward your bad habits, the reality is that techniques like mindfulness and gaining clarity about your motivation can take some work. While they’re powerful and worth trying, sometimes you just don’t have room in your life for something else that requires effort and energy. Removing temptation is a quick fix that won’t necessarily solve the problem, but it can make things easier until you have the time to properly address your bad habits and do the necessary internal work.
