Break your bad habits by 5 scientific ways

Bad habit breaking is the toughest job I think. We all have some sort of bad habits like biting our nails, smoking, drinking, limitless mobile using, excess eating of junk food etc. and many more. 

Most of the times we want to get rid from these but we can’t. These are very harmful to us; it destroys our mind and body and consumes our time too.

If you bear a destructive bad habit, then you can’t achieve your goal on time. So, it is important to break your bad habit scientifically that won’t come back.

This article brings you five scientifically proven strategies to break your bad habits. Before starting, we should know why it is tough to break the bad habits by our own. Let’s go there to expose the reason behind it.

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Why it is so hard to break a bad habit?

Bad habits are very easy to make and hard to break, because, it depends on our emotional and mental circumstances. These all are brain game, i.e. our brain mainly works on trigger and reward basis, which is called “habit loop”.

In this habit loop, a trigger or stimulus can starts the habit, which is followed regularly as a routine and the result of the activity came to us as reward. If these loops continue then a habit is formed whether it is a good or bad.

For example, in a long hectic day, under stress condition, you like to eat a large quantity of ice cream and then you feel stress free. So, in this case, the stress is the trigger which stimulates to eat the ice cream, which is bad habit and by doing this you feel stress free which is reward for your brain. This is how your bad habits are formed. It affects your life, it harms you mentally and physically.

If your brain get relaxed by this, then it is too hard to stop. The bad habits rotate daily almost automatically. During the particular time your brain will send signal to complete the habit to get relaxed and we complete it without paying an extra concentration on it.

To break a bad habit we need willpower, awareness, motivation etc., absence of which make it too hard to break for us.

At the later part of this article, calculate your points regarding bad habits, if anyone of you got higher points then you must learn how to break a bad habit conveniently.  

                                                              Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

Let’s break up with your bad habit by these steps

Instead of having so many worst side of bad habits like destroying our health and mind, waste of our time, drainage of our energy, we still do them. 

If some of us want to remove it, they can’t get rid of the bad habit. So, focus now on following tips to break the bad habits permanently.

1. Identify your triggers and cut them off

Identify when you need to do a habit, as if after some work, you need a much time for Facebook scrolling or during some important work, you bite your nails. Identify when you feel trigger to do that habit and stop the habit to perform.

For example, don’t scroll Facebook for that time, try to read some online articles, sometime you may remain logged out or don’t bite your nails at work pressure, refrain yourself to bite by massaging your nails with some highly fragrant cream.   

Just avoid the things that cause the bad habit to perform. For example, if you addicted to TV and play all day just sitting on your sofa, then told someone to hide the TV remote in a place unknown to you.

Be aware about your trigger, and then you can understand that when you have to stop the bad habit to perform. Better awareness can help you to break the existing habit loop.

Regular mindfulness practice can help you to identify your trigger perfectly that help you to break the bad habit.

2. Replace your bad habit with good one

All the habits give you some sort of benefits to you either it is bad or good. Here benefits means feel good sense, for example, your brain feels good after smoking.

Bad habit helps you to cope up with the stress. So, it is very hard to eliminate a bad habit from your system until you replace it with a good habit providing same feeling. Therefore, choose an alternative for your bad habit.

Focus on a common habit like smoking or eating a lot of junk food. When you feel like you have to perform this then avoid it and in it’s place chew a gum or take some fruits salad or some healthy snacks.

Practice this habit loop with new item for some days to incorporate this in your daily habit.

3. Set a better reason for quitting

Just replacing a bad habit with a good one is not enough. Your brain can differentiate easily the different feeling between the cigarette and chewing gum. So, it is important to know that why are you quitting!!

To overcome this problem, set a better reason in your mind for quitting. Get a mindset that smoking is a bad habit and you replace it for your health, you can live longer and spend a long time with your family.

This thought can help you to break a bad habit anyway.

4. Learn to say, “I don’t” in place of “I can’t”

During the time of setting a goal or to make choices for your alternative habit make sure you use the word “I don’t” instead of “I can’t”. It will help you a lot to choice your new habit.

If you say, “I don’t smoke” rather than “I can’t smoke”, it will left an impression on your mind and you will be less likely to smoke.

A study was done and published in the Journal of Consumer Research, showed that there was 61% reduction regarding chocolate eating among students who said “I don’t eat chocolate” rather than “I can’t eat chocolate” which showed 36% reduction in chocolate eating.

So, if you want to stick to your goal then try to say “I don’t” instead of “I can’t”. 

5. Commit to change and stick to it

Change is not so easy to continue, especially when it related to your habit whether it is bad or good. After doing all the changes listed above, you should commit to yourself to stick to the changes for lifetime.  

However, before committing, make sure that the replaceable items are meant for you. 

Don’t commit for such an item that is not for you, i.e. after two weeks of experimenting, you feel that it’s not working and you have to go back again to your old habit, then it will be boring to you and you can’t break your habit properly on time.

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Your level of bad habit calculator

Here you can found 5 types of common bad habits. Go through to calculate your points regarding bad habits and break it.

Serial No.	Habits	Your Answer	Points
1	Smoking	NIL	0
		Medium	1
		Excessive	2
2	Eat a lot of Junk food	NIL	0
		Medium	1
		Excessive	2
3	Biting your nails	NIL	0
		Medium	1
		Excessive	2
4	Using too much mobile	NIL	0
		Medium	1
		Excessive	2
5	Alcoholic	NIL	0
		Medium	1
		Excessive	2

*Calculator prepared by ConSCIENCE

Check your result here.

0-3: You have a minimum bad habit. Stick to this routine or try to avoid it too.

3-5: You have moderate bad habit. It’s the proper time to control it.

5-8: You have a high level of bad habit. If you can’t control it now, then it will increase day by day and go out of your control.

8-10: You have a very high level of bad habit, which you can’t control. You really need to break it now; otherwise, you will face different health or mental problem in near future.

ConScience

Bad habit can destroy your self esteem and kept you in unmotivated state. Elliot Berkman, director of the University of Oregon’s Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab said that, as habits take practice and repetition to form, then break up with habits take same practice and repetition.

So, don’t rush in any point to break the bad habit. Just practice and repeat your new habit loop to establish a good habit.

It can boost your self-confidence and self-control that is highly required to control a bad habit.  

Keep patience and never lose hope to be free from your bad habit. Once you break and establish a new good habit, you feel free for lifetime.

Photo by Manan Chhabra on Unsplash Edited by ConSCIENCE