In last week’s post, I spoke about changing your attitude to change your life. Although this internal change is essential, it must also be accompanied by an external one – changing your habits.
If you downloaded the free workbook, you know that I used to watch NCIS religiously while ironing. While watching NCIS is not a bad habit in itself, I had to swap it for a more productive activity once I decided to become an author.
How Do You Get Rid of Habits?
You don’t.
That’s right. Most habits are useful. They allow us to do things on autopilot and free our brain up to concentrate on more important things. The problem is, our brain doesn’t distinguish between good and bad habits, which is why they are hard to overcome. Recognise that this is normal and be kind to yourself.
You’re only human after all.
There’s usually an underlying reason for bad habits. Are you bingeing on social media to avoid communicating with your family? Watching too much NCIS to distract yourself from the mind-numbing boredom of ironing? In order to break the habit, you need to know what purpose it’s serving. Once you figure that out, you can then deal with the cause.
That’s why, instead of eliminating bad habits, you replace them with productive ones that give you similar benefits.
Let’s use ‘addiction to social media’ as an example.
- Substitute. What can you substitute your habit with? I swapped Facebook for audiobooks. They take away the boredom (the reason for my bad habit) and guide me towards my goals.
- Remove the triggers. You can’t be on your phone if it’s in a drawer in another room.
- Find an accountability partner. Your kids can be fantastic accountability partners. Tell them that you’re not going to look at your phone until a certain time, and see what happens if you go on it before then!
- Surround yourself with like-minded people. You are the average of your five closest friends. Choose wisely.
- Visualise yourself in your new identity. Imagine the person you will become if you swapped your habit for something more productive.
- Return to the person you were before your addiction. You don’t necessarily have to become a new person – just the person you used to be. You survived most of your life without social media, and you can do it again.
- Use the word ‘but’ to counter defeating thoughts. E.g. ‘I failed today, but everyone fails from time to time.’
- Plan for failure. No one is perfect. Accept that it is normal to fail, and try again the following day.
Conclusion and Recommendations
St Francis of Assisi said: ‘Start by doing what’s necessary. Then, do what’s possible. Suddenly, you’re doing the impossible.’ Changing your habits doesn’t have to be a bombastic event requiring superhuman effort. All you need to do is tweak your current habits and make small improvements which stack up over time. I also recommend that you read James Clear’s ‘Atomic Habits’. You won’t regret it.
Have you ever changed your habits and changed your life? Please let us know in the comments!
