Everyone has bad habits—those that they know or deem undesirable and that are negatively impacting their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
As a gamer, you’re likely aware of all the bad habits you can pick up in gameplay, such as excessive screen time, poor posture, or neglecting physical activity, that can be detrimental to your ability to complete the game. However, in real life, these bad habits, whatever they are, can impede your quality of life and be detrimental to your well-being.
With this in mind, however, breaking bad habits, although necessary, isn’t always as easy as you want it to be, especially those that are addictive in nature and consume your thoughts. On average, it takes around 20 weeks to break a habit, although reports suggest this can range from 18 days to 280 days for some people. Making a new habit can take from a week to 6 months.
If ditching bad habits is on your agenda for this year, then these tips can help you get started and give you the best chance of success.
Identify Your Triggers
Each habit you have will likely have a direct trigger—something that compels you to indulge in what you want to break. By identifying these triggers, you gain a profound sense of control over your actions, empowering you to make positive changes in your life.
Take some time to track your habits and behaviors and write down the following.
- What time of day are you likely to do this?
- What triggers you?
- How does it make you feel?
- Is anyone else involved?
- Are there other actions that go hand in hand with the habit you want to break?
The more patterns you can identify, the easier it will be to spot your triggers and take action to avoid or change them to help you break your bad habits.
Find Your Why
You need to know why you want to break the habit. Simply saying you want to without a reason might not be enough to help you succeed. Sit down and consider why you want to break this habit.
Are you staying up too late at night and not getting enough sleep? What will happen if you manage to go to bed earlier? What do you want to happen? Maybe you want to stop indulging in sweet treats. Why is this something you need to stop doing, and what are the benefits of doing so?
Finding the reason behind stopping your bad habit can give you the extra push you need to help you stick to new changes in the palace and eradicate the theme once and for all.
Get Help
A problem shared is a problem halved, after all, and if you have someone batting for you in your corner, your chances of success will be instantly greater.
You might want to involve a family member or friend to support you and help you take measures to ensure you don’t fall back into bad habits. You might also want to talk to a therapist to work through issues that might be preventing you from quitting certain habits. Alternatively, if you’re dealing with an addiction and want to quit, getting treatment at a recovery center might be the best option for you at this time.
Replace The Habit
When you break a habit, you’re efficiently stopping doing something that has become commonplace in your daily life. Not doing so leaves you with a void that needs filling to help you avoid reverting back to unwanted patterns and behaviors. It can be a good idea to replace the habit with something more beneficial.
If you want to stop snacking on sweet treats, having healthier options like fruits or nuts can be a good idea to fill that void and remove the temptation. If you want to stop smoking, finding something to do with your hands that either keeps you busy or mimics the smoking action, like chewing gum or using a stress ball, can help you fill that empty space.
You need to be careful that you’re only picking good habits to replace one so you don’t fall into a vicious cycle of introducing bad habits only to break existing ones and replace them with other not-so-suitable options.
Don’t Expect Perfection
Change is hard, and while it comes easier for some people than others, it still takes willpower, determination, and commitment to make the change. You didn’t make a habit in a day, and you likely won’t break it in a day. You should expect slip-ups and bad choices to impact your journey, but the key is not to expect perfection. Accepting this can bring a profound sense of relief, reducing the pressure you put on yourself.
You can take all the measures possible in the palace to avoid this happening, and consistency and commitment to forming new habits can be beneficial. However, accepting mistakes will enable you to draw a line under things and move forward as you are instead of slipping back into old habits.
Don’t Do Too Much At Once
One mistake many people make in the early days is making too many changes or too big of a change at once. Take small steps and break things down into manageable chunks. This approach can make the process less overwhelming and more achievable.
This is especially true if you have joint habits, i.e., having something sweet after every meal or smoking when you drink alcohol.
You can start by making one small change, e.g., not eating something sweet after lunch. When this is manageable, you can cut down further, not having sweet treats after every dinner, and so on. Start small, be consistent, and be confident that you can do this, and then slowly build on it until you get to the end goal.
These 6 tips can be instrumental in helping you start on your journey to better habits and give you peace of mind you are able to quit doing the things you don’t want to do anymore or are detrimental to your health.
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