If you are planning on changing your life and becoming more successful by stopping your bad habits, you are going about it entirely the wrong way. There is a much better way to stop bad habits and that’s simply by replacing them with good ones.
Let’s get straight into some examples so that you can see exactly what this means for practical purposes. This is a list of some of the bad habits that you might want to change.
- Stop eating so much fast food
- Stop binge-watching Netflix and get more work done
- Quit procrastinating so much
- Stop staying up so late
- Quit being so messy
Okay, so now you have identified some bad habits that you want to change. The problem is, if you start on the road to change with this list you are going to psych yourself out before you even begin, because you are going to be taking things away from yourself. The way that this list looks to your brain is something like this.
- Never eat those delicious burgers, fries and milkshakes ever again
- Stop having the enormous pleasure of binge-watching Netflix TV shows
- Work all the time and always be doing boring stuff
- Quit partying and never stay up and do anything fun
- Be a boring neat freak and be cleaning up all the time
When you are listing bad habits that you want to break, you are making your brain think that it’s losing some of the most pleasurable parts of your life. This will make you battle yourself when you try to make these changes. Instead, you want to do something different, like setting some new habits that will add benefits and value to your life.
Here are some examples of some habits that will do exactly the same thing as the ones identified above, but will trick your brain into thinking you are getting a reward instead of being punished and having something taken away.
- Eat healthy for at least one meal per day
- Watch Netflix on the weekends
- Complete at least 5 tasks each week before they are due
- Start getting more sleep on weeknights
- Become more organized in certain areas (home, office)
As you can see, even though these give you the same exact result as your other habits, they are not taking anything away from your life – especially something pleasurable. Sure, if you read between the lines, you can see that watching Netflix on the weekends means that you don’t watch it on the weekdays, but your plan isn’t to fool yourself completely; you just need to trick your brain a little to get it to quit fighting you when you try to implement a new habit.
Why Negativity Never Works
The number one factor that will determine whether or not you can achieve your goals is whether you believe in yourself. Any sort of negativity, whether it is coming from the habits that you are changing or the thoughts going through your head is going to mess with that confidence.
When you replace your negative habits with positive ones, you see positive change in your life. If you are focusing on the negative habits then all you do is get depressed and overwhelmed because you see just how many negative habits you have that you need to change. This starts an all-or-nothing cycle that results in nothing but depression and failure.
On the other hand, if you are trying to add positive habits to your life, you don’t have the all-or-nothing ultimatum. You feel good when you act on your good habits, even if you aren’t perfect at them, and it makes an environment much more conducive to change.
Things to Keep in Mind
There are a few things that you should keep in mind as you are working on changing your habits. These are truths that you should remind yourself of every day until you have them memorized and can refer back to them.
- Everyone has bad habits that they are trying to change. Some people have a few more than others but that doesn’t make them any less valuable of a person and the individual who overcomes more to change their habits can end up a much stronger person than someone who got there easily.
- Whenever you find a bad habit that you want to change, think of a way to put a positive spin on it. Find a way to create a good habit that will squeeze out the bad habits without making you think that you are losing anything valuable from your life.
- The most important thing that you can do when it comes to training a new habit is try your best every day. Don’t get discouraged because you had a bad day and didn’t do as much as you thought you should have. As long as you made an effort it is going to count towards your 30 days.
- Remember, 30 days is just a guideline. Everyone is different and there is nothing wrong with you if you need a little longer to make a habit stick. In fact, some studies show that if you want to form a truly effective habit, then 66 days is a better guideline. However, 30 days is a really good start.
- Be flexible when it comes to training new habits. If you have made a goal that you are going to study a new language for one hour every day but you cannot every find a full hour to study, there is nothing wrong with cutting it down to a half hour, or even ten minutes if necessary. Try not to be too rigid and don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t get it right the first time.
A Recap of the Important Stuff
The thing that you want to take away from this chapter is that you always want to make your habits something positive that are adding something to your life. There are some great examples here of ways that you can turn a negative into a positive. These may have nothing to with your goals, and in fact, your goals may be so different that you might not be able to see right away how you can replace the “do not” with the “do” habits.
A good way to overcome this is by writing down the “do not” and then coming up with a list of things that you might be doing in place of it if you suddenly found that you were no longer exhibiting that behavior tomorrow. Keep plugging away at it and refine your habits as needed.
