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How to Stop Bad Habits – 6 Effective Steps to Break Unhealthy Habits
Habits are our brain’s powerful way of increasing its efficiency. Turning daily actions and behaviors into habits frees up our brainpower for more important challenges. They are our autopilot system to manage life easier.
Even bad habits often benefit our well-being. The short-term effect is a better mood and reduced stress. But they often have a negative long-term impact on our health and life.
30-second summary:
Habits are automated behaviors that help us cope with everyday life more efficiently. However, bad and unhealthy habits can also creep in.
Bad habits are challenging to break. But with the right steps and a little discipline, it works! On average, it takes 66 days.
Six steps to breaking negative habits:
- Identify and understand: Identify your bad habits and the reasons behind them. Motivation and goal setting: A strong “why” is crucial to success in changing habits.
- Identify triggers: Find out what triggers your bad habits (e.g., stress, being bored).
- Replace: Look for better alternatives that satisfy the same needs.
- Make it unattractive and difficult: Make it difficult to perform the bad habit (e.g., put cigarettes and sweets out of sight).
- Use habit trackers: Track your progress regularly to stay motivated.
- Progress review: Check your progress periodically and adjust your strategies.
Table of Content:
Why is it so difficult to stop unhealthy and bad habits?
The answer is dopamine. All bad habits provide some kind of good feeling or pleasure such as relieving stress when we are smoking or having a drink. This feeling prompts our brain to release dopamine. We are getting a reward (good feeling, less stress) for performing the bad habit (smoking).
So whenever we are in a certain situation (feeling stressed) our brain creates the craving to perform this habit to get its reward. The role of dopamine in the brain’s reward system and its link to habits is supported by various studies.
It becomes a vicious cycle as our brain keeps us craving the things we’re trying to stop. This knowledge allows us to develop strategies to break and stop bad habits. This article will show you how it works in 5 easy to follow steps.
How many days does it take to break a bad habit?
The short answer: It depends, but on average it’s 66 days.
The European Journal of Social Psychology published a study that states, it takes 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit. Breaking a bad habit is similar.
The study also concluded that, on average, it takes 66 days for a new (replacement) behavior to become automatic.
The question „How long does it take to break a habit“ contains so many variables that it’s impossible to establish a one-size-fits-all answer. For example, it certainly takes longer for a person to stop smoking if they did it over the last 20 years than for someone trying to break the bad habit of always forgetting to floss their teeth in the evening.
Here’s a List with Examples of Unhealthy or Bad Habits:
- Smoking: An unhealthy habit that increases the risk of various health problems.
- Drinking too much: Excessive alcohol consumption can lead to liver damage, mental health problems, and social difficulties.
- Aimless internet surfing or excessive cell phone use can lead to procrastination, sleep disorders, and reduced productivity.
- Eating fast food: Regular consumption of fast food can lead to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and other health problems.
- Being disorganized or chaotic: Lack of organization can cause stress, affect efficiency, and lead to delays.
- Being late: Being consistently late can cause inconvenience to others and affect professionalism.
- Excessive consumption of salt, sugar, caffeine, or nicotine can affect long-term health and increase the risk of various diseases.
- Refrain from brushing teeth or flossing regularly: This can lead to dental problems.
- Procrastination (putting off tasks): Can cause stress, ineffective work habits, and unfinished tasks.
- Constantly breaking promises or not keeping appointments can affect the trust of others and lead to interpersonal problems.
How to Stop Bad Habits – Step 1 – Becoming Aware of My Bad Habit And Its Consequences
Habits are a helpful tool to manage our daily life. They are often unconscious (95 %) and automatic behavior that allows us to live our life effectively.
Most habits are very helpful and positive, while others can also work against you. Even worse – there are a few “bad habits” that can harm your health and quality of life.
The short-term effects of bad habits are often positive (relieving stress), while the long-term effects are negative (affecting your health) if you’re thinking about smoking for example. These negative effects can be seen as side effects that accumulate and take over more and more.
If we experience these negative effects we come to the point to ask ourselves what’s going on here? We have to take a closer look at what originally triggered us to implement this habit and to find a way to replace it with a new and good habit that doesn’t have these negative side effects.
Mindfulness and self-reflection help to recognize bad habits
Eliminating bad habits is like setting a goal. You increase your chances to succeed if you have a specific outcome in mind. It’s also important that you are the one who wants to overcome this bad habit (intrinsic motivation).
Chances are high that you’ll fail if you’re just doing it because someone else said you should do so. Again your motivation should come from within and should not be driven by external factors. Research shows that self-reflection and mindfulness techniques are effective in recognizing and changing unhealthy habits.
You increase your chances of breaking bad habits if you’re concentrating on one habit at a time. Once you overcome it you can focus on the next one.
The exercise included in the “Build Good and Break Bad Habits Toolkit will help you identify the #1 bad habit you should start working on.
How to get rid of unhealthy habits – Step 2 – Identifying My Habit Triggers – Gaining Back Control
Your bad habits are usually initiated by a trigger. To create lasting change and get rid of your bad habits you need to understand when and why these triggers appear.
They often seem to be external like a certain location or being surrounded by certain people, and most of the time it is a feeling or emotion you are craving for.
Try to become aware of the triggers of your bad habit. Find out which satisfaction you get from performing the habit. Once you are aware of the origin of the bad habit it becomes a lot easier to find a replacement that serves you better.
Tracking your triggers over some time will help you to become more aware of them and therefore is much more in control of your response to them. The exercise in this Toolkit will help you identify the triggers and become aware of the satisfaction you get from your bad habit.
Tip: Strong Resilience will help you to deal with setbacks and roadblocks. This article contains 13 tips and exercises that will help you build and train the resilience you’ll need.
How to break any negative habit – Step 3 – Find a Replacement Habit
All our habits serve us in some way. Especially, bad habits are often driven by the motivation to feel differently than you do at the moment. That means our habit is connected to a certain feeling we expect to get when performing this habit.
And that’s the reason why we are repeating them over and over again. When you light up a cigarette you want to relieve stress or the feeling of being part of a group of smokers.
Oftentimes we are not even aware of the feelings we are getting from this habit. A good example is people who are always late. On the surface, you might think they are just badly organized, but the real reason is they often enjoy being in the center of attention. Every other person has to wait until they finally show up. The entire behavior is often unconscious.
Try to come up with an alternative and better habit that satisfies your craving and provides you with the same feeling and reward as the bad one. The exercise included here will help you.
A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit – Step 4 – Make it Easy
Once you identified that bad habit and its triggers it’s time to work on some strategies that will help you to succeed and create lasting change. Our bad habits often build up over time and once they are formed it’s not easy to break them.
Every habit is initiated by a trigger. You crave a cigarette after seeing a colleague smoking or while feeling stressed at work. Simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. It will work a few times, especially in the beginning when you’re still motivated, but in the long-term, it’s unlikely to work.
One of the best ways to break a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the trigger that causes it. Put your smartphone in another room if you’re constantly distracted and can’t get any work done. If you’re not getting enough sleep because you’re watching too much television – Remove it from your bedroom. If you smoke a cigarette whenever stress comes up – place them out of reach. Avoid the bar if that’s the place where you always drink too much.
The goal is to find ways to reduce exposure to things that trigger your bad habit. The exercise in the “Build Good and Break Bad Habits“ Toolkit will help you. You will also identify ways to make it unattractive and difficult to perform.
Get Rid of Bad Habits – Step 5 – Use a Habit Tracker
What gets measured gets done!
Habit trackers work and are the easiest way to measure whether you managed to stop or replace your bad habit or not. The most basic format of a habit tracker is a paper where you write down the habit you want to build (or break). Add 30 columns (for one month) and cross off each day you stick with your new habit (or managed not to perform your bad one).
You could also use software tools like CleverMemo to record your progress in a more detailed way. This allows you to track what’s working and what doesn’t and to adjust your plans.
A beautifully designed habit tracker in PDF form is included in the “Break Bad Habits and Build Good Ones Toolkit“.
How to Stop Unhealthy Habits – Step 6 – Regular Progress Review – Goodbye Bad Habits
When you decide to break a bad habit and replace it with a better one you’re excited about your goal. You initially planned everything to make your new habits stick and that the former bad habit disappears.
Unfortunately eliminating or replacing habits is not a one-time set it and forget it task. You have to make it a habit itself to constantly review and reevaluate your plans and actions.
This constant review has several benefits:
- You know and see your progress (What gets measured gets done)
- You ensure you’re moving in the right direction
- You reengage with your goals (Do I still want this or do I have to make adjustments?)
- You constantly improve your strategy and action plan
- You stay motivated and keep your momentum
This Toolkit includes a review form you should fill out every two weeks. That’s enough time to evaluate your actions, progress, thoughts, and feelings about your status quo.
The Habit Loop (Infographic – Example)
Wrap Up: How to Break Bad Habits in 6 Effective Steps
We hope these 5 steps will help you along the way to break your bad habits. Ensure you have a strong “Why“ (purpose or goal) to have the lasting motivation that is necessary to stop or replace your habit. This Toolkit will be an additional help on your way to success:
Sources and Resouces:
- How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world – Lally et al. 2010
- Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data – Schultz 2015
- Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health: A Review of Empirical Studies – Ken et al. 2010
- Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence – Karkin et al. 2016
- Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit” offers practical insights into understanding and changing habits based on scientific research.
- Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
