Most people don’t know how to properly break and build habits. It’s not something we are ever taught in school and it’s not something many of us choose to learn as we grow older. This is quite absurd because habits form the foundations of our lives. When we have good habits, we open ourselves up to more opportunities of health, wealth, and happiness. When we have bad habits, we slowly move further away from those things. Knowing how to break your bad habits and build new good habits is a skill you need to know.
Let’s start with some basics.
The importance of habits
Habits are the deciding factor in how we live and respond to our lives. Your habits can truly make or break you. In fact, it is estimated that 40-50% of our daily actions are autonomous habits. This mean we often aren’t present with 40-50% of our actions, we are just running on auto-pilot.
With nearly 50% of our daily actions being due to habits, it’s incredibly important that we break bad habits and create good ones. They determine who we become, what we achieve, what our relationships are like, and how we show up in our lives. Habits are quite literally at the very core of everything we do.
3 things that change behavior long-term
Dr. B. J. Fogg, the founder and director of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University and the author of Tiny Habits, says that there are only three things that change behavior for the long-term.
- An epiphany
- Being placed in a new environment
- Taking tiny baby steps
Most people cannot summon an epiphany at any given moment. If we could, we’d all be walking geniuses. Therefore, that is not an actionable way to change your behavior – you have to sit and wait for it to happen. Being placed in a new environment works wonders, but how often can we do that? It’s not convenient to keep switching your life around.
The best option you have to create long-term behavior change is to take little, tiny, baby steps. They are the actionable steps that are going to help you break and build habits.
Little Tiny Baby Steps
Starting any new task is difficult, but if you can come up with the simplest actions to start making progress, it will become a piece of cake. Often, when we look at our long lists of dreams and aspirations, we get overwhelmed and have no clue how we would start to go about them. That’s why we procrastinate. But if you were to break them up into tiny bite size pieces, you’d see just how attainable they actually are.
That’s where the power of little tiny baby steps comes in. For example, if you want to create a new habit of running each morning, your first step would be to put your running shoes where you will see them (you don’t need to run). The next day, put your running shoes out and then put on your shoes (you don’t need to run). On the next day, put your shoes out, put them on, and open the door to go outside (you don’t need to run yet). The next day, put your shoes out, put them on, open the door, and run for 10 seconds to the end of your driveway. From there, work your way up in tiny increments until you are running the distance and time you want.
Taking little tiny baby steps works in the long-term and short-term for two reasons. The first is that they are achievable. When the goal is simply to put on your shoes, you’ll likely have little to no resistance to do so. You’ll start the day off with an immediate win, which will often lead to more wins throughout the day. The second reason they work is because they put you in a situation to accomplish more. Once your shoes are on, you are so much more likely to actually go for the run than to just take them off. When you open the door to go outside, chances are you won’t turn back around. That’s the power of taking baby steps.
How to break a bad habit
Breaking habits is hard. The reason they’ve become habits in the first place is because we have repeated them thousands and thousands of time. Trying to quit a bad habit cold turkey often leads to sub-optimal results and a relapse. If you are serious about breaking a bad habit, there’s three things you need to consider and think about.
- How strongly do you want to break your habit?
- How established is the habit already?
- What are the consequences of not breaking the habit?
Spend some time jotting down the answers to these questions and finding your emotionally charged reasons. Try to go as deep as you can to get to the raw feelings and reason for wanting to break your habit. The stronger, the better.
Once you have an emotionally charged reason, you need to think about a healthier habit to replace your bad habit. Research shows that replacing a bad habit is much more effective than trying to stop one altogether. If you have a habit of drinking coffee each morning, try to replace the coffee with a glass of water or tea. If you spend time on your phone before bed, try to put a book in your hands instead of a phone.
With your emotionally charged reasons and a healthy replacement habit, all that’s left is to work on creating that new healthy replacement habit. Over time, the addition of that habit will crowd out and remove the old one.
How to create a good habit
On average, it takes about 66 days to create a new habit. That’s 66 days of consistently showing up and putting in the work. Luckily, little, tiny, baby steps make those 66 days feel like a breeze.
Before you get started, it’s important to choose a good habit following Jim Kwik’s WIN formula in his book, Limitless.
W – Want
Make sure you actually want your new habit and care about it. Refer back to your emotionally charged reasons to eliminate your bad habit and think about why it’s important for you to create this new habit. If you don’t want to do a new thing, it’s nearly impossible to make that new thing a habit.
I – Innate
Does your new habit align with your values, beliefs, and abilities. If you don’t have the capacity or skills needed to start the new habit, you’re unlikely to make it through the 66 days. Make sure the habit is something you can do independently that you know you can be good at. If you can do that, you’re well on your way.
N – Now
Create a prompt or cue for yourself that encourages you to perform your new habit now. You could set a reminder on your phone, put up sticky notes around the house, or have a friend keep you accountable. Without a cue, you might fall off the rails after a week or so. Be certain you have a reminder or nudge to complete what you’ve set out to do each and every day.
By following this formula and taking little, tiny, baby steps each day, you’ll have your new habit solidified in no time. It really is that simple! You just need to be consistent and always remember your reasons.
To aid in your habit building process, you may want to enroll or commit yourself to a 30-day challenge. I’ve done numerous 30-day habit building challenges and they are a great boost to creating a new habit.
Wrap-Up
Learning how to break bad habits and build good habits is an essential skill in today’s world. By finding emotional reasons, taking baby steps, and being consistent, you’ll be able to do it with ease.
What habits do you want to break?
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