

Maybe you go out to social events more than you should when around certain people. Maybe you procrastinate only when in your room. When taking the 2 to 4 weeks to learn about your bad habit and what triggers it, you should get an understanding of environmental factors that contribute to it as well.

Your positive substitute may not fully satisfy you, but having one decrease the chances of you slipping back into your bad habit. Simply not eating junk food will not change the fact that you are hungry, by replacing the type of food you eat you eliminate the negative aspect of the behavior while still satisfying your body’s craving. Every time you get the urge to eat junk food because you are hungry, grab a healthy snack instead of just going hungry. Consider the bad habit of eating junk snacks. Replacing the negative behavior with a positive one makes it easier to kick the bad habit than just doing nothing.

One of the most important steps to breaking bad habits is creating a plan ahead of time of what it is you are going to do when getting the urge to carry out the undesired behavior. Setting many attainable small goals will improve the chances of success.ģ. Instead, try reducing the amount of time you allow yourself to spend on your phone every night or every couple of nights. Doing so will make it harder to break the habit and increases your chances of slipping back into it. If your bad habit is spending too much time on your phone before going to sleep, don't try to reduce your phone usage to zero from one day to the next. The best way to go about breaking bad habits to tackle it a little bit at a time. Make many small changes, not one big one. Having unknown triggers may hinder or completely stop you from kicking your bad habit without you even realizing.Ģ. Instead, you should take 2 to 4 weeks to gather all the information you can about your bad habit such as: What triggers it? When does it happen the most? Does it happen in some places more than in others? It is important that you get a deep understanding of your bad habit and what brings you to do it that way you can fully address it.
#BREAKING HABITS STATISTICS FREE#
Don't try to break the bad habit right away.Īlthough you may be eager to break free of your bad habit, you shouldn't go after it right away. Here are several tips in identifying and breaking bad habits:ġ. Any improvement in your lifestyle leads to an improvement in your quality of life, which is definitely worth the effort, especially if it helps you thrive in your college years. You shouldn’t get discouraged by the time it takes to form a new habit, though. 2 The time it takes to form a new habit may vary depending on the severity of the old bad habit and how long you’ve had it. On average, it takes 66 days to form a new habit. Getting rid of or replacing bad habits is not always an easy task. A student may be going to bed late because they spend too much time on social media. 1 For example, many understand that going to bed late and spending too much time on social media can lead to negative performance on class work, but not many understand how these bad habits exacerbate each other. One study shows that many students are aware of their most serious bad habits but few understand the relationships between them. Common ones for college students include procrastination and not sleeping enough. There are many kinds of bad habits and they vary in severity. A bad habit is any repeated behavior that results in a negative or unwanted outcome. We have all thought at one point or another: “I really need to stop doing this.” Bad habits are common and most people have at least one while many have multiple.
