HAVE you been wanting to stop some undesirable things that you have been doing regularly? Activities like overspending, saying curse words, procrastinating, biting your fingernails, drinking six cups of coffee a day, piling up your laundry, eating fast food every day, the list goes on and on. And suddenly, you put your foot down and tell yourself that you are going to change. The determination and motivation in becoming a new person is very strong the moment you decide to do it. But then, you find yourself being tired and missing the old habits that you badly want to change. So, how do you make it easier for yourself to stay on track and stop certain habits that you do not want to do anymore? Here are a few tips.
Have an accountability partner
Do you find yourself trying not to eat that extra chocolate bar in private? And since no one knows about your decision to stick to one chocolate bar a day, no one will know if you failed in following through with that plan. And that makes stopping a bad habit harder, especially if you don’t have any support. Having someone who is as adamant as you are in discontinuing a particular habit can be very helpful. Aside from that, knowing that someone is rooting for you to successfully break a bad habit is a powerful motivator.
Be patient with yourself
They say it takes 21 days to form a new habit but it takes longer to break one. So be patient with yourself and don’t expect that you will be a changed person the next day (although it depends on the habit). Do not exasperate yourself and just take it one step at a time. Go small instead of making intense adjustments. An example would be forcing yourself to sleep at 8 p.m. instead of 12 a.m. because you want to have an earlier sleeping schedule. Change your sleeping time gradually, from 12 a.m. to 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. and earlier until you reach your desired sleeping time.
Have a fallback plan
It’s normal to have bad days when you just don’t have the will and motivation to stop yourself from doing something, like binge eating on comfort food when you’re having a bad day. So expect bad days and understand that setbacks are normal. But that should not be an excuse to relapse and go back to your old self. Instead, use the bad days to plan on how you can avoid falling back into a certain habit and make a plan on how to get back on track with more determination and self-control. You can include triggers that you noticed happen before the setback happened and try to avoid it next time.
Take note of the triggers
According to self-improvement website Pick the Brain, there are five prompts when falling back into a bad habit: location, time, emotional state, other people, and immediately preceding action. For example, you tend to lose concentration when reviewing for your exams and you often find yourself talking to other people on social media for extended periods of your break time. The next time you look at the clock, an hour has passed since your “10-minute break” started. Your trigger would fall under the “other people” category and talking to them on social media tends to be the cause of your much extended break. You can try to remove that object of distraction until you are done studying in order to properly concentrate on the task at hand. By identifying the prompts that set off the habit first, you can be wary and extra attentive to avoid getting into the habit when these triggers take place. (Joelle Pilande / USC Intern)