Steps of Breaking Habit
By: Yan • Essay • 638 Words • December 14, 2009 • 1,156 Views
Essay title: Steps of Breaking Habit
"Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with" and "Bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with", according to Brian Tracey, a well-known motivational teacher. You may recognize that to successfully manage habit changes, breaking bad habits may be required in order to develop new ones. Breaking bad habits takes at least 21 days. Of course, in difficult cases, it can take as long as a year. Here’s an example of the process of how to change an unhealthy habit to a healthy habit. Suppose you’ve decided that coffee is not good for you and right now, you drink coffee with sugar daily. The new habit you would like to institute is to drink herbal tea without sugar.
At first, it may be challenging to break the bad habit of drinking coffee. You will have to use self-discipline for the first few weeks but gradually it will get easier. Once you are able to change the old habit to a new healthier one, it will serve you very well. Habits are remarkable because they don’t require thinking. You just “do it” for years until you find yourself changing the habit again.
There are 5 easy steps for changing habits .The first step is You must become aware of your habits. What is this habit exactly? How is this bad habit or group of bad habits affecting you? How is this habit affecting others? For example, smoking often has negative effects on others as well as on you .Secondly as someone with a health problem, you must decide that breaking bad habits through a conscious effort is a worthy goal. You must convince yourself that the change in the habit is worth the effort involved.
Furthermore, you must be determined to do whatever it takes for breaking bad habits so that you can better control your life. You make a decision that “no matter what” you will change the habit. You do the work required to stop. Here are some examples of habits you might want to change: Smoking, eating too much, eating processed foods, not exercising, drinking coffee or other beverages with caffeine in them, eating too much sugar or fat, drinking alcohol, procrastinating, etc.
Besides that, t is important to focus on changing just one habit at a time. Then, take consistent daily actions