how to get rid of bad habits essay

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Essay on How to Break Bad Habits

What are bad habits and where do they come from? How to recognize a bad habit? How can something that we like be to the detriment of our physical and mental health? What are the effective ways to break bad habits? In this essay, I will try to answer all these questions. Do not consider my work as a guide to help someone get rid of bad habits. These are more thoughts of mine that some people may find handy or even helpful.

What Is a Bad Habit?

When someone says “bad habit”, smoking or alcohol are the first things that come to our mind. However, the term is much deeper in sense. Sometimes, we have bad habits without even realizing they are bad. As stated earlier, it is not only about smoking or drinking. Bad habits may refer to a passive way of life, using swear words, eating unhealthy food, or suffering from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, boredom, and so on.

In other words, a bad habit is any action that can be to the detriment of health, mood, or even state of mind. What’s more, we need to take into account actions that may harm not only ourselves but also people who surround us. The problem appears to be more complicated than it seems and we need to figure out the main cause of bad habits first.

What Factors Cause Bad Habits

I am concerned that all bad habits mainly result in two reasons. They include boredom and stress. As a rule, people wrong things whenever they need to cope with stress or deal with an unpleasant situation. Every time a person had a fight with the dear one or problems at work, he or she tries to handle them with the help of alcohol or a cigarette just to chill out a bit.

Unfortunately, none of those can bring us to a normal life. What’s more, they may even make things worse and lead to more serious troubles.

The only way to prevent those consequences is to be able to recognize the bad habit on time until it becomes too late. This is where a person may become addicted to smoking, junk food, and so on. The next stage is to break the bad habit.

Steps to Break Bad Habits

After we have successfully identified habits we need to break, we need to get prepared. The task is not as easy as some may think. It will require discipline and patience. Some may start feeling bad. However, the situation will improve in the near future along with your state of mind and well-being. So, the main steps are as follows:

• Find the alternative – a fast and simple way to give up the bad habit. All you need is to substitute it with something less harmful. For example, when you give up smoking, chewing gum can bring great relief. The idea is to keep your mouth busy with it and forget about cigarettes.
• Team up with friends – one is very likely to have a friend or relative with the same problem and the aim of giving it up. A good idea is to team up and try to fight the bad habit back together. You may support each other every time it is hard. Another way is to set several triggers. For example, every time both of you want to smoke you start running instead.
• Create a harmonious atmosphere – the best way to get rid of stress and boredom, which are the main cause of bad habits, is to be among people who love you. They will always find encouraging words or help when you alone fail to cope with the problem.
• Set clear targets – it is not only about visualizing yourself without beer or a cigarette. It is about real actions and steps to take when breaking the habit. Create an outline or plan with schedules and timeframes.

Stick to that plan and try to build your new identity that is not dependent on boredom, stress, or other external factors.

The key to success is to understand your sole responsibility for obtaining a bad habit after having your back against the wall because of some problems. However, it does not mean you are supposed to judge yourself. We are all humans, and all humans make mistakes. It is absolutely natural for every person. The question is how we are going to get over those problems.

On the one hand, the process of breaking bad habits can be very tough and time-consuming. You may have to limit yourself, which will result in more inconveniences at first. However, it is certainly worth taking those steps in case you want to live a full life, have good health, and the ability to cope with any trouble with ease.

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How to Break a Bad Habit and Replace It With a Good One

Bad habits interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. They jeopardize your health — both mentally and physically. And they waste your time and energy.

So why do we still do them? And most importantly, is there anything you can do about it?

I’ve previously written about the science of how habits start , so now let’s focus on the practice of making changes in the real world. How can you delete your bad behaviors and stick to good ones instead?

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but keep reading and I’ll share what I’ve learned about how to break a bad habit.

What causes bad habits?

Most of your bad habits are caused by two things…

Stress and boredom.

Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress and boredom. 1

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom, which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits.

Of course, sometimes the stress or boredom that is on the surface is actually caused by deeper issues. These issues can be tough to think about, but if you’re serious about making changes then you have to be honest with yourself.

Are there certain beliefs or reasons that are behind the bad habits? Is there something deeper — a fear, an event, or a limiting belief — that is causing you to hold on to something that is bad for you?

Recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them.

You don’t eliminate a bad habit, you replace it.

All of the habits that you have right now — good or bad — are in your life for a reason. In some way, these behaviors provide a benefit to you, even if they are bad for you in other ways.

Sometimes the benefit is biological like it is with smoking or drugs. Sometimes it’s emotional like it is when you stay in a relationship that is bad for you. And in many cases, your bad habit is a simple way to cope with stress. For example, biting your nails, pulling your hair, tapping your foot, or clenching your jaw.

These “benefits” or reasons extend to smaller bad habits as well.

For example, opening your email inbox as soon as you turn on your computer might make you feel connected. At the same time looking at all of those emails destroys your productivity, divides your attention, and overwhelms you with stress. But, it prevents you from feeling like you’re “missing out” … and so you do it again.

Because bad habits provide some type of benefit in your life, it’s very difficult to simply eliminate them. (This is why simplistic advice like “just stop doing it” rarely works.)

Instead, you need to replace a bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit.

For example, if you smoke when you get stressed, then it’s a bad plan to “just stop smoking” when that happens. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and insert that new behavior instead of having a cigarette.

In other words, bad habits address certain needs in your life. And for that reason, it’s better to replace your bad habits with a healthier behavior that addresses that same need. If you expect yourself to simply cut out bad habits without replacing them, then you’ll have certain needs that will be unmet and it’s going to be hard to stick to a routine of “just don’t do it” for very long.

How to break a bad habit

Here are some additional ideas for breaking your bad habits and thinking about the process in a new way.

Choose a substitute for your bad habit. You need to have a plan ahead of time for how you will respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. What are you going to do when you get the urge to smoke? (Example: breathing exercises instead.) What are you going to do when Facebook is calling to you to procrastinate? (Example: write one sentence for work.) Whatever it is and whatever you’re dealing with, you need to have a plan for what you will do instead of your bad habit.

Cut out as many triggers as possible. If you smoke when you drink, then don’t go to the bar. If you eat cookies when they are in the house, then throw them all away. If the first thing you do when you sit on the couch is pick up the TV remote, then hide the remote in a closet in a different room. Make it easier on yourself to break bad habits by avoiding the things that cause them.

Right now, your environment makes your bad habit easier and good habits harder. Change your environment and you can change the outcome.

Join forces with somebody. How often do you try to diet in private? Or maybe you “quit smoking” … but you kept it to yourself? (That way no one will see you fail, right?)

Instead, pair up with someone and quit together. The two of you can hold each other accountable and celebrate your victories together. Knowing that someone else expects you to be better is a powerful motivator.

Surround yourself with people who live the way you want to live. You don’t need to ditch your old friends, but don’t underestimate the power of finding some new ones.

Visualize yourself succeeding. See yourself throwing away the cigarettes or buying healthy food or waking up early. Whatever the bad habit is that you are looking to break, visualize yourself crushing it, smiling, and enjoying your success. See yourself building a new identity .

You don’t need to be someone else, you just need to return to the old you. So often we think that to break bad habits, we need to become an entirely new person. The truth is that you already have it in you to be someone without your bad habits. In fact, it’s very unlikely that you had these bad habits all of your life. You don’t need to quit smoking, you just need to return to being a non–smoker. You don’t need to transform into a healthy person, you just need to return to being healthy. Even if it was years ago, you have already lived without this bad habit, which means you can most definitely do it again.

Use the word “but” to overcome negative self–talk. One thing about battling bad habits is that it’s easy to judge yourself for not acting better. Every time you slip up or make a mistake, it’s easy to tell yourself how much you suck. 2

Whenever that happens, finish the sentence with “but”…

• “I’m fat and out of shape, but I could be in shape a few months from now.”
• “I’m stupid and nobody respects me, but I’m working to develop a valuable skill.”
• “I’m a failure, but everybody fails sometimes.”

Plan for failure. We all slip up every now and then.

As my main man Steve Kamb says, “When you screw up, skip a workout, eat bad foods, or sleep in, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human. Welcome to the club.”

So rather than beating yourself up over a mistake, plan for it. We all get off track, what separates top performers from everyone else is that they get back on track very quickly. For a handful of strategies that can help you bounce back when you make a mistake, read this article .

Where to go from here

If you’re looking for the first step to breaking bad habits, I’d suggest starting with awareness.

It’s easy to get caught up in how you feel about your bad habits. You can make yourself feel guilty or spend your time dreaming about how you wish things were … but these thoughts take you away from what’s actually happening.

Instead, it’s awareness that will show you how to actually make change.

• When does your bad habit actually happen?
• How many times do you do it each day?
• Where are you?
• Who are you with?
• What triggers the behavior and causes it to start?

Simply tracking these issues will make you more aware of the behavior and give you dozens of ideas for stopping it.

Here’s a simple way to start: just track how many times per day your bad habit happens. Put a piece of paper in your pocket and a pen. Each time your bad habit happens, mark it down on your paper. At the end of the day, count up all of the tally marks and see what your total is.

In the beginning your goal isn’t to judge yourself or feel guilty about doing something unhealthy or unproductive. The only goal is to be aware of when it happens and how often it happens. Wrap your head around the problem by being aware of it. Then, you can start to implement the ideas in this article and break your bad habit.

Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but mostly it takes perseverance. Most people who end up breaking bad habits try and fail multiple times before they make it work. You might not have success right away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have it at all.

P.S. If you want more practical ideas for how to build new habits (and break bad habits), check out my book  Atomic Habits , which will show you how small changes in habits can lead to remarkable results.

Hat tip to Leo Babauta for originally talking about stress and boredom driving bad habits.

Hat tip to Scott Young for sharing the great idea about using the word “but” to overcome negative self–talk.

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to think about. Over 3,000,000 people subscribe . Enter your email now and join us.

James Clear writes about habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits . The book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 60 languages.

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5 Ways to Overcome a Bad Habit

These actionable steps can help you conquer harmful habits..

Posted February 23, 2021 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

Breaking your habits down into these fundamental categories can help you understand what a habit is, how it works, and how you can break it. This is known as the habit loop. Primarily, a cue is developed, which, when activated, triggers a craving.

The craving then motivates a response, which provides your brain with a reward, which satisfies the desire, and ultimately becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four things end up forming a neurological feedback loop that eventually allows you to develop automatic habits.

Fortunately, there are many ways that you can destroy your bad habits and keep them away for good. Which one works best will depend entirely on your individual circumstances and specific inclinations.

1. Quit Cold Turkey

You can eliminate bad habits by not indulging in them, not even for one day, starting now. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. It can be incredibly challenging to get rid of a bad habit because it is deeply ingrained in your brain.

When the bad habit’s trigger repeats, it can quickly reignite the old behavior. This is the greatest weakness in this particular method. Often, when an old pattern or behavior recurs, when you slip back into your old bad habit just once, you tend to make a huge fuss over it, and you feel like you wasted all of your time being abstinent.

You end up becoming crushed by self-disappointment that when you slip just once and return to your old habit, you completely slip back into your old ways. However, there is a power to such an approach. If you can quit cold turkey and persevere in your resolve, you can prove to yourself that you are entirely capable of making changes.

2. Change Your Habit Loop

Recent studies discovered that habits are stored in the brain in a different way than more standard memories. Typically, your emotion triggers a behavior that ends when the emotional urge has been satisfied when it comes to your habits.

There are twofold repercussions to these findings. First, if your habits are hardcoded in your mind, it means they are impossible to remove. This means that once those habits have been formed, they will stay with you for the rest of your life, which is why drug addicts and alcoholics relapse into their addictions, sometimes after decades of sobriety.

Second, there isn’t any such thing as getting rid of your old habits. Instead, you have to overwrite the bad habit with a new routine. The most efficient method for achieving this is by reprogramming the behavior. However, you have to make the new habit stronger than the old habit if you want it to stick.

Fortunately, by changing your habit loop, you can more easily solidify the new behavior, which will make it much more difficult for you to return to the old habit.

3. Use Small Steps

Using small steps to overcome a bad habit is a combination of quitting cold turkey and changing your habit loop, as discussed above. While you disagree with your bad habit, you also freely admit that you cannot quit your habit cold turkey.

This makes it necessary to analyze your behaviors and identify your triggers. When you can accomplish these two tasks, you can gradually limit your bad habit. For example, if you are trying to break the habit of eating poorly, you can start small by indulging in fewer sweets. With each passing week, you need to reach another milestone in eliminating your bad habit from your life.

After enough time has passed and you've continually worked toward making small changes in your habit, you will finally arrive at a point when you can completely stop engaging in your bad behavior automatically. Theoretically, with this method, you should be less prone to feeling discouraged when you slip. You have to assume some failure with this method but are better equipped to keep your motivation . This method is much more convenient for those who can quantify their bad habits.

4. Track Your Progress to Reinforce Your Determination

While this isn't necessarily a method for breaking a bad habit per se, it is beneficial in every instance of getting rid of a bad habit. In the above method of taking small steps toward getting rid of your bad habit, the approach is relatively apparent. If you are about to restrict yourself by having only a few cigarettes, you need to track the number.

When you change your habit loop, it is also a great idea to start tracking what isn’t working. At the bare minimum, tracking your progress comes down to checking whether or not you engaged in your bad habit that day. You can also use the tracking method when using the cold turkey method of eliminating bad habits.

When you quit your bad habit, you should be counting the days without the behavior or habit and try to build a streak that motivates you to keep going. When you find yourself clean for a single day, and you haven't been in years, it can be incredibly blissful. The second day that you add to the chain feels like an event worthy of a celebration.

Then comes the joy of going a week, later a month, then the first year. These kinds of milestones can provide you with a sense of accomplishment, even though you aren't really doing anything other than abstaining from engaging in a habit, which is the whole point of this particular method.

What's more, tracking your progress works in the same way as building your good habits. It focuses your attention on the essential things and provides you with the motivation to keep moving forward. It can also provide you with valuable data points that can help you to identify your pitfalls and critical points.

5. Focus on Your Good Habits

This method will ultimately kill your bad habits by starving them. Getting rid of bad habits focuses your attention on the negative aspects of your life. It can end up feeling incredibly restrictive rather than liberating. When you focus on eliminating bad habits, you watch yourself and end up denying yourself the pleasures you’re used to having in your life.

While you know that it is better to avoid engaging in your bad habits in the long run, those bad behaviors are a part of who you are, whether you like it or not. They were the mechanisms you used to relieve stress and help you cope with anxiety and low self-esteem . Without them, your life might seem to be less bearable.

So, instead of focusing on your bad behaviors and what you can’t do, you should focus on new activities that contribute to your life in a more positive way. To break your bad habits, funnel all of your energy into habits that will improve your experience rather than avoiding what is wrong with it. While your bad habits will continue to lurk in the depths of your brain, the only time they will resurface is if you lower your guard.

When it comes to eliminating bad habits from your life, it is essential to remember that you are about to embark on a long and challenging journey. You will continually be tempted to return to your old ways and risk succumbing to your old habits.

While these methods will help you break your bad habits, you must remember that the temptation to fall back into your old ways will always be there. Don’t continue to let your bad habits dictate your life. Take the first positive steps toward changing your bad habits today and start living a happier and healthier life now.

Sarah-Len Mutiwasekwa is a mental health advocate whose efforts are invested in breaking the stigma around talking about mental health and increasing awareness of these issues in Africa.

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Essays About Bad Habits: 5 Essays Examples and Writing Prompts

Writing about bad habits poses an interesting topic ; to help with your essays about bad habits , read our top essay examples and writing prompts below.

Many people tend to discount their bad habits as small. They get blinded to their life-shattering and long- term effects because they don’t think of it as a “big deal,” they get blinded to their life-shattering and long- term effects. 

Whether smoking or procrastination, these habits are detrimental to our quality of life . Many people don’t realize how detrimental these habits can be until they create more significant problems in their lives.

Writing about bad habits and how to kick them will create an engaging, compelling, and thought-provoking essay. Read on to see the best examples of essays about bad habits and 8 intriguing writing prompts .

1. Weekly Reflections – The Ordeal of Breaking Bad Habits by Steven Lawson

2. how to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one by james clear, 3. how bad habits form (and why they’re so difficult to break) by ian kan, 4. break your bad habits by amy novotney, 5. 5 bad business habits you need to stop immediately by dylan ogline, 8 prompts on writing essays about bad habits, 1. causes of bad habits, 2. how bad habits take a toll on the health, 3. getting past the challenge of changing bad habits, 4. how to know if a habit is bad or good, 5. does stress drive us to form bad habits, 6. are bad habits contagious learn how to avoid adopting them, 7. american habits that are considered weird or bad habits in other cultures, 8. understanding the time it takes to break a bad habit.

“Our external realities are always tied to and flow out of our interior/spiritual core. Change occurs first at one’s core and then manifests itself on the surface, not the other way around.”  

Lawson uses a spiritual approach to understand bad habits , including how they’re formed and how to get rid of them. He delved into his difficulties with transforming his bad habits and wrote about how he perceived his bad habits as a behavioral reaction to a problem.

“You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom, which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits .”

Clear’s take on bad habits is that they are methods of dealing with stress and boredom. After explaining the formation of habits from stress and boredom, he provides methods and tips for replacing them with good habits . Clear also included examples that his readers can easily relate to.

“Of course, you might feel guilty, but the goal is to be aware of those bad habits and how often they happen. Then from there, you can hatch a plan to break those habits .”

Ian Kan’s essay on bad habits dives into the psychology behind habit formation, including the various stages. After this in-depth look, he offers various methods of transforming bad habits into good ones.

“Self-motivation is best sustained by having a clear, long-range goal that can be broken down into a series of specific, attainable smaller goals to guide one’s efforts along the way.”

Novotney’s essay focuses on the top ten habits that grad students have that prevent them from gaining further academic success. She emphasizes how these habits keep students from making it through graduate school. On top of listing a good number of commonly practiced bad habits among students, she also included solutions for fixing and correcting them.

“But with each habit I shed, my prospects got brighter. When I shed all five, my agency was on track to becoming the seven-figure business it is today.”

Ogline takes bits and pieces from his experience as a business owner to write his essay on bad habits . He also provides business smarts and wisdom for readers of his essay, whether they’re simply interested in the essay or fellow entrepreneurs.

Consider the essay ideas and topics we’ve listed below if you’re more interested in writing your essays about bad habits .

Understand why bad habits exist or how they form by reading and writing about them. Use this essay writing opportunity to talk about how certain actions, situations, or emotions may lead to the formation of some bad habits .

Like stress, bad habits can worsen a person’s health. This essay focuses on the harm bad habits may cause to a person’s physical or mental health. You can even include how bad habits caused by stress can stress a person even more.

This idea will drive you to consider how difficult it is to get out of a habit cycle. When you choose to write about this topic , ensure you research the different methods of effectively dropping bad habits for different kinds of people. It gives immense help if you’ve already experienced how hard it is to break a bad habit. 

Figure out how to write a narrative essay to better share your story.

Sometimes, a habit lies in the gray area. It can be good in certain situations and bad at other times. Thus, it’s helpful to figure out how detrimental or beneficial a habit is. Consider including a habit’s effects in the short and long term .

Bad habits can form from many things, including stress. This essay prompt encourages you to read about how stress can create bad habits in a person. For example, drinking alcohol can become a way for someone to cope with stress from work or family pressure. Then, consider other forms of bad habits and how stress might have a hand in encouraging their formation.

Like diseases, bad habits can spread from person to person. In extreme cases, bad habits can even affect entire nations. Think about the bad habits you’ve gotten from being around or observing other people. You can also apply this essay to fictional works wherein the characters start adopting each other’s bad habits . It provides a good study on how bad habits can

What you may see as a bad habit can be good in a different culture. A famous example is slurping noodles loudly in East Asian countries. Loud slurping is unpleasant and rude in the West, but it’s a sign of appreciation for the food in East Asia. Research other habits that create cultural divides and discuss the different ways people view them, whether negatively or positively.

Let’s say you’re ready to break a bad habit. The challenge is to endure until you’ve gotten rid of it or changed it into a good one. This essay idea is a perfect topic for people who have tried breaking several bad habits and want to write about the experience. Use this essay topic to explore why some bad habits took longer to stop and how difficult it has been to break them.  

Get more writing ideas from our informative essay topics list for students.   

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What are bad habits?

How bad habits form and persist, how to break bad habits.

• Tip 1: Explore your reasons for changing

Tip 2: Set the right goals

• Tip 3: Identify the triggers

Tip 4: Build your action plan

• Tip 5: Use mindfulness

Tip 6: Cope with habit changes

Tip 7: know when to seek help, how to break bad habits change negative behaviors to healthy ones.

Feel stuck in a cycle of negative or addictive behaviors? No matter how ingrained they feel, you can learn how to break bad habits and replace them with healthy, positive alternatives.

Bad habits are unhealthy behaviors we engage in so often that they’ve become automatic. While some automatic behaviors can be healthy, such as brushing your teeth before bed or buckling your seatbelt in the car, bad habits tend to have negative effects on your well-being—such as eating junk food, drinking too much , smoking, skipping exercise, or staying up late to binge-watch TV or scroll through social media . All of these negative behaviors can affect your mental as well as physical health, increasing stress , anxiety, and depressive feelings.

Bad habits can also take on the form of social behaviors. If you habitually make yourself the focus of every conversation, for example, it can annoy your friends or significant other and create divisions in your relationships. Or if you’re a people-pleaser who always says “yes” without thinking, others may take advantage of your kindness, impacting your welfare.

Other common bad habit examples include:

• Skipping meals or not staying hydrated.
• Pulling your hair or biting your nails when stressed or bored.
• Being bossy or giving unsolicited advice.
• Waiting until the last minute to study for an exam or prep for a meeting.
• Listening to music at a volume that’s harmful to your hearing .

Sometimes the consequences of your bad habits are obvious. You waste weekends nursing hangovers, for example. You face legal issues due to your habitual speeding. Or your bank account reflects your latest gambling or online shopping spree.

Despite the negative consequences, bad habits can be incredibly persistent and difficult to shake. You may have tried many times to drop an unwanted habit, only to find yourself sliding back into the same negative patterns of behavior. Repeatedly failing in your attempts to change can leave you feeling disheartened and hopeless.

But no matter how long you’ve had a bad habit, or how automatic a behavior it seems to be, it is possible to make a real and lasting change. The first step to changing a negative behavior is to understand how habits develop and why they stick around.

There can be several reasons how and why bad habits form. In some cases, negative behavior patterns may simply be the result of repetition. They allow you to operate on “auto-pilot,” so you don’t have to put much thought into what you need to do next. You have an argument with your partner, so you automatically reach for a bar of chocolate or a tub of ice cream.

Bad habits can also be the result of a habit loop. A habit loop has three components: a trigger, a behavior, and a reward.

• A trigger is an external cue to your brain to engage in a behavior. Triggers can come in many forms, such as sights, smells, thoughts, or emotions. For example, if a coworker yells at you, it can trigger you to feel stressed out. Or perhaps you’re bored and then notice someone staring at their phone.
• Next, comes the behavior . You reach for a cigarette when you’re stressed about the conflict with your coworker. Or you open your social media app when you see someone else on their phone.
• Finally comes the reward . Smoking seems to ease your work stress, or scrolling through social media alleviates the boredom. Your brain finds a benefit to continuing the behavior. The reward could be a negative reinforcer—making something unpleasant, such as stress, go away—or a positive reinforcer—adding something desirable or pleasurable to your life.

Each time you engage with a habit loop, your brain links all three of the components together. This way, certain behaviors become deeply ingrained, especially if you’ve repeated them for years. However, it’s still possible to break bad habits, curb addictions, and replace negative behaviors. The process will require both patience and persistence, but with these tips you can change your life for the better.

Rather than focusing on giving up an existing bad habit, it’s often easier to replace it with a healthier habit. After all, when you free yourself of one behavior, some other behavior needs fill the void. This also allows you to use habit loops to your advantage. Essentially, you want your actions to be motivated by healthier, more productive rewards.

Of course, bad habits can be stubborn, so it’s important to have realistic expectations as to how long it will take to replace them. One popular myth suggests that it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. More recent research indicates that 66 days is the average amount of time that it takes for a new behavior to feel “automatic.”

The actual timeline can vary widely based on the person and their goal. In general, the simpler the new behavior, the quicker it will turn into a habit. For instance, it might be easier to make a habit of buckling your seatbelt than it is to start and maintain a daily exercise routine .

Expect to spend two to three months, or perhaps even longer, trying to replace a bad habit with a healthier one. But know that it gets progressively easier the more you stick with your plan.

Replacing multiple habits at a time

If you have multiple bad habits that seem unrelated, you might want to narrow your focus to one habit at a time. You can give a habit your full attention and then move on to the next when you feel comfortable.

However, in some cases, bad habits may complement one another or contribute to a common problem in your life. For instance, your habit of staying up late can fuel your habit of drinking too much coffee throughout the day, or vice versa. Both habits can then contribute to anxiety . When negative behaviors overlap like this, it may be more effective to tackle them all at once.

Whether you’re trying to address one bad habit or multiple negative behaviors, you can adopt a similar approach to making a change. The first steps will involve clarifying your motivations and goals. Then, identifying your triggers and coming up with a plan to address them. Finally, knowing how to incorporate mindfulness and cope with lifestyle changes can help to reinforce healthy new habits.

Tip 1: Explore your reasons for changing a bad habit

We tend to label bad habits as “bad” because we recognize there’s some real consequence to our behavior. Your smoking habit could be severely damaging your health, or your habit of impulse shopping wrecking your budget. Procrastination might be standing in the way of your academic success, or overworking adversely impacting your marriage.

Exploring your own reasons for wanting to change can help you stay motivated, even in the face of setbacks.

Write down what you stand to gain by dropping a habit. Consider the small and large benefits. For instance, maybe you want to drop the habit of leaving your lights and television on all night. The benefits of turning off your electronics could be to improve your sleep , lower your electric bill, and reduce your carbon footprint.

Write down what you don’t want to change and why. It may be unnecessary or even counterproductive to drop certain parts of a bad habit. In the example above, you could decide that you want to leave a sound machine on at night because it helps you to sleep.

Regularly revisit your reasons. Keep your list handy. Put it on your phone or keep a physical copy on your fridge or nightstand. Any time you feel discouraged or disenchanted with your goals, look at the list. You might even decide to add or subtract reasons from the list as time goes on.

Coming up with the right goal is an important step in breaking a bad habit. If the goal is too general, too difficult, or too hard to measure, you risk sliding back into old patterns of behavior.

“Approach” rather than “avoid.” As mentioned before, you want to replace the bad habit with a healthier one. So, when forming a goal, focus on “approaching” a new behavior (“I want to start using a stress ball when I’m feeling tense”), instead of putting all the emphasis on avoidance (“I want to avoid chewing my nails when stressed”).

Get specific. When objectives are poorly defined, it’s easier for you to move the goalposts and give in to cravings. Some examples of vague goals include:

• “I want to stop sleeping in.”
• “I want to stop watching so much TV.”
• “I want to quit impulse buying at the supermarket.”

Instead, make your goals measurable and time-oriented:

• “I want to be out of bed by 8 a.m. each day.”
• “I want to replace one hour of evening television with one hour of physical activity.”
• “I want to start using a basket rather than a cart at the supermarket to limit my purchases.”

Make your goal realistic. For example, if your bad habit is being messy, don’t expect to drop it completely in several days. Instead, consider setting small goals for gradual improvement. In the case of mess and clutter, you could start with a goal of tidying up just one room or one closet of your home within the next week. As you begin to see the benefits of a neater space, you can move on to tidying the next area of your home.

Track progress. Keeping a tally of how often you engage in the new habit or avoid the bad habit can help you identify milestones. This could be as simple as putting a checkmark on your calendar for each day you exercise or get out of bed by 8 a.m.

Celebrate the small victories. Meeting incremental goals and acknowledging your successes can help motivate you to continue the path forward. Reward yourself with a self-care session (such as a hot bath in the evening after exercising) rather than indulging in new unhealthy habits (opening a tub of ice-cream as a reward).

Tip 3: Identify the triggers of a bad habit

Identifying habit cues can be tricky. Sometimes, they’re obvious—the stress of an argument triggers you to begin chewing your nails, or a push notification on your phone prompts you to begin scrolling. Other times, they’re more subtle—just looking at the clock at the end of the workday triggers you to head to your favorite bar for happy hour.

Getting to know your triggers can help you better understand what drives your habit and then establish a workable action plan. Jot down a list of possible triggers for your bad habit.

Remember, triggers can be:

• Emotional states , such as loneliness , boredom, or anxiety.
• Settings that you associate with the habit, such as a bar.
• People who engage in the habit or encourage your behavior.
• Time , such as a point in the day in which you typically indulge in the habit.
• Preceding actions that serve as a cue, such as picking up your phone whenever your screen shows a notification, or smoking after a meal.

If you’re having trouble identifying the cues or believe you’re missing something, try recording the time and location of your last craving. Consider who was around you, how you were feeling, and any events that took place beforehand. Repeat this exercise multiple times throughout the week, and then review your list for patterns.

It’s also possible that a single bad habit has multiple triggers. For instance, you might be more likely to impulse shop when you’re stressed out, browsing online before bed, or in a store with your best friend.

When it comes to breaking a bad habit, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The action plan that is most effective for you might be different from another person’s, even if the habit you’re trying to change is the same. Try out a few of the following strategies and determine which to incorporate into your daily life:

Create barriers to bad habits. To make overeating more difficult, don’t keep junk food in your home. To avoid sleeping in, set an alarm and leave it on the other side of the room. Delete the app that feeds your scrolling habit. Spend less time around people who pressure you to drink or smoke.

Remove any barriers to the new habit. Maybe you’ve decided that instead of scrolling on social media, you’ll go for a 10-minute walk each day . To make the action as easy as possible, leave a pair of walking shoes, a jacket, and an umbrella near your door. This helps ensure you’re ready to go outside no matter the weather.

Build a routine around the new habit. You might make a cup of coffee and sip it as you walk around the neighborhood. Or you could use that time to chat with a loved one on the phone. These types of actions can also further incentivize you to maintain the healthy habit.

Visualize yourself succeeding. Visualization techniques can be a powerful tool for some people. Use your imagination to strengthen your resolve and set your intention. Envision yourself cooking dinner once you get home instead of ordering out. Imagine yourself being a listener rather than dominating the conversation.

Have an accountability buddy. You might know other people who are also trying to curb a negative or addictive behavior. Chat with coworkers, friends, and family members who share similar goals, and then agree to hold each other accountable. For example, you may decide to go for daily walks with a coworker instead of heading to the bar after work. Even if the other person isn’t wrestling with a destructive habit, they might still offer you support and encouragement.

If you can’t find in-person support, online message boards and support groups can be useful resources.

Tip 5: Use mindfulness to a break bad habit

Habitual behavior involves an element of thoughtlessness. You find yourself reaching for junk food or your phone as if you’re on “autopilot.” Mindfulness, a nonjudgmental awareness of what you’re feeling in the moment, can help you recognize and cope with cravings.

[Read: Benefits of Mindfulness]

The next time you feel a craving arise, try the following method, known as RAIN, to ride out the urge until it passes. The purpose of this activity isn’t to banish the craving but rather to become more familiar with it and see it as a temporary state.

With consistent practice, you’ll have an easier time noticing your craving and enduring it until it passes.

• R ecognize when the craving is starting. Maybe you feel the desire for a sugary treat building, or perhaps you have the urge to make an online purchase.
• A cknowledge and accept that the craving is here. You don’t need to do anything to solve it. A craving can be uncomfortable, especially if you don’t act on it, but imagine it as a wave that will pass in time.
• I nvestigate the feeling. Get curious about your experience. What’s physically going on with your body? What sensations are present? Perhaps your muscles are tensing or your mouth is watering. What are your thoughts or emotions like in this moment?
• N ote the sensations. Label what you’re feeling. Restless thoughts. Fidgeting. Quick breathing. Put the feelings into words and note how they change throughout the wave. After a few minutes, you will likely notice that the craving naturally subsides.

Pay attention to how the bad habit feels

Even when you give into a craving and perform the habit, you can use mindfulness to your advantage. Take note of what indulging in the habit feels like. What does it feel like to bite your nails? How does your body feel after hours of scrolling through social media? What taste is left in your mouth after you finish a cigarette?

Being mindful of these sensations can lead you to realize that the bad habit doesn’t actually feel good at all. What you initially interpreted as a reward is now a consequence. You may even find yourself becoming disenchanted with the action altogether.

Just because you’ve established a healthier habit it doesn’t mean the work is done. In fact, it’s easy—and common—for old behaviors to return. Here are some tips for navigating the road ahead:

Continue to build on your newly formed habits. If you’ve started a routine of daily walking, consider progressing to regular jogs around the neighborhood. If you’ve started to let go of your people-pleasing habits at work, move on to setting firmer boundaries with friends and family. If you’ve replaced junk food with healthy eating habits, continue experimenting with new recipes. All of this will further reinforce good habits as a regular part of your life.

Update the people around you. If the old habit was something you indulged in with others, such as drinking after work, let them know that you’re trying to make a change. This can help cut back on intentional or unintentional peer pressure.

Let go of all-or-nothing thinking. On occasion, you might find yourself sliding back into bad habits. If you feel particularly stressed one week, you might look to your old comforts: eating junk food, smoking cigarettes, or chewing your fingernails. In those moments, it can be tempting to think, “This puts me back to square one. What’s the point?”

• Self-compassion is important here. When you’re feeling discouraged by a setback, try offering yourself the same level of reassurance and encouragement you would offer a friend or loved one.
• Remind yourself that setbacks will happen, but they don’t negate all your progress. You’ve developed tools, learned strategies, and built willpower that can help you get back on track and continue making progress.

[Listen: Being Kind to Yourself: A Meditation]

When a bad habit seems particularly stubborn or interferes with your daily functioning, consider that it might be part of a deeper underlying condition. Some examples of bad habits that you may need to seek professional help for include:

• Smoking or drinking to cope with social anxiety .
• Oversleeping due to feelings of depression .
• Binge eating due to an eating disorder.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can involve engaging in ritualistic actions that you might label as bad habits. You might constantly wash your hands to alleviate intrusive thoughts about germs. Or always seem to be running late because you spend too much time sweeping the floor or rearranging items on your desk.
• Other bad habits are actually addictions . When you try to drop them, you experience uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. For instance, your nightly drinking or recreational drug use is due to a substance abuse disorder.

A mental health professional can guide you through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and help you understand the thoughts and feelings that drive your actions. Even when a habit is fueled by an addiction or disorder, you can also still make lifestyle changes to improve your sense of well-being. Whatever is causing your negative behavior, there are ways to make the journey to breaking your bad habits easier and more productive.

Speak to a Licensed Therapist

BetterHelp is an online therapy service that matches you to licensed, accredited therapists who can help with depression, anxiety, relationships, and more. Take the assessment and get matched with a therapist in as little as 48 hours.

More Information

• The Habit Mapper - Visual tool to understand the three components of a habit. (Dr.Jud.com)
• Alimoradi, Z., Jafari, E., Potenza, M. N., Lin, C.-Y., Wu, C.-Y., & Pakpour, A. H. (2022). Binge-Watching and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 19 (15), 9707. Link
• Bailey, R. R. (2017). Goal Setting and Action Planning for Health Behavior Change. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine , 13 (6), 615–618. Link
• Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions—ScienceDirect . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Breaking Bad Habits | NIH News in Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Brewer, J. (2018).  The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. Yale University Press. Link
• Changing Habits – Learning Center . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Gardner, B., Lally, P., & Wardle, J. (2012). Making health habitual: The psychology of ‘habit-formation’ and general practice. The British Journal of General Practice , 62 (605), 664–666. Link
• How to break a bad habit—Harvard Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Hyman, D. J., Pavlik, V. N., Taylor, W. C., Goodrick, G. K., & Moye, L. (2007). Simultaneous vs sequential counseling for multiple behavior change. Archives of Internal Medicine , 167 (11), 1152–1158. Link
• Karim, F., Oyewande, A. A., Abdalla, L. F., Chaudhry Ehsanullah, R., & Khan, S. (n.d.). Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Cureus , 12 (6), e8627. Link
• Trade bad habits for good ones—Harvard Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• What Is the Habit Loop? —Dr. Jud . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link

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Process of Quitting a Bad Habit Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The only way of quitting a bad habit that seems to be most effective one is to replace it with a good habit. Human nature cannot tolerate a hole or vacuum in life, if anybody wants to eliminate a bad habit from his or her personality, it is required to fill that gap with something influential and positive. Otherwise, that vacuum might follow a path of least resistance and get filled with the same bad habit again.

Undoubtedly, process of quitting or replacing bad habit is very difficult and emotional. It requires motivation and determination as well as an aim with a defined time limitation. In this paper, we will discuss the important steps that may help achieve the targeted goal.

People who realize that they need to bring change in their lives by quitting their particular bad habit can easily achieve their target as compared to those who fear facing problems during the process of quitting bad habit. They are more likely to deny the fact that quitting bad habit can alter their lifestyle in a better manner. As a beginner, it is vital to take a start by defining particular attitude aims (Brizer, 2011). It can be done by altering daily activities and gradual changing the behavioural characteristics.

Do not try to do it alone, as it is a crucial attempt. It needs motivation from such a partner who is also willing to quit the same bad habit. For example, if two persons try to quit smoking together then it becomes easier to get success. Otherwise, it has been noted that when a person sees another person with the same bad habit he or she loses motivation and turns back to the same old habit (Brizer, 2011). But, if one individual with the same goal keeps on motivating another partner during the critical process of kicking bad habit it surely brings a positive change.

Quitting or developing any habit is not that easy as it might seem to be. It needs time along with determination. A person needs to maintain a diary or calendar in which sub-goals should be mentioned with timeline. It means this process also needs proper planning before implementation. For example, if a person drinks 15 cups of tea daily, he or she needs to cut down the number of cups slowly and accordingly i.e. cutting down two tea cups per week. Also, hourly division can help in this situation (Lock & Grange, 2004).

Such as, if a person is addicted to puff two cigarettes in an hour then he or she should try to take one cigarette per hour. At this stage during the process of quitting bad habit, it is significant to replace bad habit with the positive ones. In such a situation, physical exercise, intake of healthy foods, and spending time with friends and family can help overcome a bad habit successfully (Febish, Febish, & Oxley, 2011). For example, if a person is habitual of drinking too many soft drinks, it will be very helpful for such a person to drink a chill glass of water to fulfil the urge of having soft drink.

During the process of overcoming the bad habit, slippage also gives motivation to the person. For example, if a person is aiming to quit habit of eating too many chocolates in order to put off some weight then after following a strict diet plan for two or three weeks that person can eat a piece of cake or a sweet – say once in a fifteen days (Febish, Febish, & Oxley, 2011).

It will give him or her motivation that he or she is not being completely deprived from what he loves to eat the most. It is a known fact that quitting bad habit can make a person frustrated or aggressive. It does not mean that the person starts giving headache to his family members or friends because that person is not getting, what he or she is addicted to (Brizer, 2011).

It is because this attitude can affect their behaviour and relations with others in an adverse manner. One should continue to realize the significant importance of bringing change in the life by quitting a bad habit. Self-motivation and rewarding are other important factors that play key role during the whole process. It is vital to keep on rewarding yourself for all the initial steps you may undertake daily. Also, other people may also reward you (Lock & Grange, 2004). Try to meet those people, who can appreciate you for the change and those who could get motivation from the positive changes in your personality or behaviour.

From the above process analysis of quitting bad habit, it has been observed that the will of a person is the foremost important without which no one can bring change in his or her life. Process of quitting bad habit requires inspiration and courage of face all difficult phases of the process and to attain the targeted aim successfully.

Brizer, D. (2011). Quitting Smoking For Dummies. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.

Febish, G., Febish, G., & Oxley, J. (2011). Food for Thought. New York: Xlibris Corporation.

Lock, J., & Grange, D. (2004). Help your teenager beat an eating disorder. New York: Guilford Press.

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How To Break A Bad Habit: A Research-Based Psychological Approach

Humans tend to be creatures of habit, relying on patterns, routines, and rituals to help us meet our needs without having to expend too much cognitive effort. While many habits can be beneficial for navigating daily life, bad habits can have the opposite effect, interfering with our ability to achieve our goals, maintain good health, or spend time meaningfully. 

Whether good or bad, however, habits are usually deeply ingrained in the brain, and breaking them often involves a period of “unlearning” the old habit and learning a new one in its place. Understanding the habit loop, implementing a reward system, and tracking your progress can be helpful. Online or in-person therapy can provide professional support in eliminating bad habits and developing healthier ones.

Understanding bad habits

Habits can be defined as behaviors we engage in with little to no conscious thought or effort. Bad habits tend to be those that negatively affect us in some way, such as wasting our time, damaging our health, or impacting our relationships. 

If you struggle with a bad habit, you may have already tried to break it, only to find yourself engaging in the same behavior again. This cycle can be frustrating and make it seem as if your own brain is acting against your best interests. In cases where the bad habit has evolved into a compulsion or addiction, it can even seem as though you lack free will. 

Why bad habits can be hard to break: Understanding the neuroscience of habits

To understand why breaking bad habits can be so tricky, it might help to learn about what’s happening in your brain when you engage in them. By the time a behavior has become a habit, it has usually been encoded deep within the basal ganglia , a group of brain structures responsible for habits and rituals. As a result, you may engage in the behavior without significant cognitive effort.

Habits typically form due to the brain’s reward system. When you engage in a pleasurable or worthwhile activity, pleasure hormones like dopamine are usually released, signaling to the brain that that behavior is “good.” With repeated exposure, the brain may become conditioned to seek out and repeat those behaviors. 

However, the resulting reward may not necessarily align with your goals, values, or desires. For example, the small pleasure of seeing positive reactions to a social media post may be enough to trigger this dopamine response, even if you might ultimately derive more satisfaction from spending your time in a more fulfilling or productive way. 

Digital habits, in particular, tend to be especially hard to break. Tech companies often strive to create a frictionless, reward-rich user experience , and with modern life demanding seemingly constant digital interactions, these pleasurable experiences are often accessible through a simple tap or click.

How to form new habits: Strategies for rewiring your brain

While bad habits can be frustrating, it may be relieving to know that they can be broken. It can take time, however. While updated evidence may be necessary, one study found that it usually took between 18 and 254 days for participants to form an eating, drinking, or activity behavior. With mindfulness, effort, and patience, you may find that replacing negative habits with positive ones becomes increasingly feasible. 

1. Understand the habit loop

You could begin by understanding the habit loop, which generally states that the cue triggers the habit, which results in a reward. Reflect on each component of your habit. Are there certain situations where you tend to be more vulnerable to engaging in your bad habit? Is your habit made easier by something in your environment? What is the reward that reinforces your bad habit?

Once you’ve become aware of these cues and rewards, you may be better equipped to make the necessary adjustments to your routine.

2. Check in with your values

Next, reflect on your values, goals, and desires. If your habit doesn’t align with the version of yourself you envision, consider what steps you could take to bridge the gap between your current behaviors and those that reflect your ideal self. 

In James Clear’s bestselling book Atomic Habits, he suggests taking a “fake it ‘til you make it” approach to habit change. You might start by adopting small, manageable behaviors that align with the kind of person you want to be, and with time, you may become that person.

3. Learn a new habit

Though it can be common to use words like “quitting” to describe the process of breaking a bad habit, it might be more helpful to think of it as learning a new one. For example, someone who wants to stop scrolling on their phone in the morning might choose to read a book instead.  

It can also help to attach your new habits to current habits, a practice Clear refers to as “habit stacking.” This might help you automate the habit more quickly, as it generally entails turning existing parts of your routine into “cues,” thus triggering a positive habit loop.

4. Implement a reward system

A reward system may be another factor worth considering, particularly as you actively work to break your bad habit. You could incorporate rewards for maintaining new habits or reaching milestones, for example. 

It can also help to become mindful of the intrinsic rewards associated with your new habits. The person who wants to avoid their phone in the morning might, for instance, bring awareness to the sense of calm and mental clarity they feel, or notice all that there is to appreciate about starting the day with a book.

5. Look for ways to eliminate cues

When you first take inventory of the “habit loop” that drives your undesirable behavior, you may notice some of the cues that lead up to it. It can be helpful to find ways to minimize or eliminate these stimuli. For the chronic phone user, that might mean eliminating the visual cue by charging the phone in another room overnight.

If your cue is situational, you might look for ways to alter your routine. For example, someone who notices that their sweet tooth kicks in while watching television in the evening might choose to play a game or phone a friend after dinner. Over time, this can weaken the habit loop.

6. Track your progress

Habit tracking can be an effective way to monitor your progress over time, and many find the simple act of noting their progress to provide a small sense of accomplishment (that is, a dopamine release). Habit tracking can also help you identify patterns or trends in your behavior and can also help you stay motivated to change your behavior.

You can find several helpful tracking apps to download to your phone, or you could make your own on a poster or in a journal. However, you track your habits, consider checking in at the same time each day so that you don’t forget.

Therapy for building healthy habits

If you’re finding it particularly challenging to unlearn a bad habit, it may be worth seeking help from a therapist. Mental health professionals often help individuals recover from problematic behavior patterns, including bad habits, compulsions, and addictions. 

Therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can be particularly effective for managing and changing behavior patterns. These approaches have been empirically validated across multiple studies, offering strategies to cope with stress, anxiety, and other underlying triggers of bad habits.

Benefits of online therapy

You can find licensed mental health professionals who specialize in these types of therapy through online platforms like BetterHelp . With online therapy, you can schedule sessions that fit into your existing routine and attend them from the location of your choice, potentially making it simple to integrate therapy as a new healthy habit.

Effectiveness of online therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy is frequently used to break bad habits and establish healthier ones, and many studies report that online CBT tends to be just as effective as its in-person counterpart .

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How to Get Rid of Bad Habits

Last Updated: March 4, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Annie Lin, MBA . Annie Lin is the founder of New York Life Coaching, a life and career coaching service based in Manhattan. Her holistic approach, combining elements from both Eastern and Western wisdom traditions, has made her a highly sought-after personal coach. Annie’s work has been featured in Elle Magazine, NBC News, New York Magazine, and BBC World News. She holds an MBA degree from Oxford Brookes University. Annie is also the founder of the New York Life Coaching Institute which offers a comprehensive life coach certification program. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 478,207 times.

Let's face it, all of us have our own bad habits. We may bite our nails or crack our knuckles. Some of us interrupt people often or procrastinate. All these nasty habits are hard to break. But have no fear! This article will teach you how to get rid of your bad habits. More information after the jump!

Adjusting Your Mindset

• Realizing that you are completely responsible for your actions can leave you feeling overwhelmed or even paralyzed at first. You begin to realize that each of your actions has repercussions, and that those repercussions are wildly different than the ones you may have imagined when you acted in the first place. It's a scary thought.
• But ultimately, being completely responsible for your actions is empowering . You are the maker of your own destiny. Within certain norms, no one else can tell you what to do. Taking full responsibility for your actions gives you freedom. You begin to understand how habits can be metaphorical chains, and how breaking them can set you free.

• Feeling of calmness and energy from nicotine
• Helps with short-term stress
• Opportunity for social ice-breaker
• Helps me feel stylish
• Numerous and damaging long-term health problems
• Gets very addictive very fast
• If abused, cuts my life short by years

• For example, maybe you're a breakfast skipper. You're trying to lose weight, so you convince yourself to do it. In the short term, you may drop a couple of pounds and feel better about your body. But in the long run, those pounds are likely to come back (because you're not dieting properly), and you're planting the seeds of an eating disorder.

wikiHow Quiz: What Kind of Reality Check Do I Need?

Pick a sea creature:, killing the habit.

• Pay attention to any triggers you may have noticed. For example, perhaps you notice that you tend to smoke cigarettes when you're with a certain friend and after you've had several drinks. You've just identified your trigger.
• If you're serious about conquering your triggers, talk with your friend. Tell him something like: "Hey, I'm really trying to kick this habit. Next time I try to bum a cigarette from you, will you remind me of this conversation?" Who knows — the friend might even refrain from smoking in front of you entirely!

• If you bite your nails or lips and cheeks , try biting on some chewing gum instead. [7] X Trustworthy Source Science Direct Online archive of peer-reviewed research on scientific, technical and medical topics Go to source
• If you crack your knuckles, try keeping your hands occupied with a squishy ball or practice doodling instead.
• Get creative with your substitutions! You never know what will or won't work until you try it.

• Smokers, for example, often find that E-cigarettes or nicotine gum do the trick. While neither alternative is without dangers, they're arguably both better for you than smoking.

Fighting Specific Habits

• Quit smoking cold turkey
• Quit smoking with e-cigarettes
• Choose a smoking cessation program
• Quit smoking with the help of caffeine

• Quit drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous
• How to drink responsibly
• How to stay sober
• Tell if you drink too much alcohol

Habit Breaking Journal Entry Template

Expert Q&A

• Use something like a rubber band. Whenever you catch yourself, snap the rubber band on your wrist. Thanks Helpful 118 Not Helpful 16
• Think positively, praise yourself when you've accomplished your goal! Thanks Helpful 105 Not Helpful 15
• Depending on how serious your habit is (like drinking,smoking, etc.), you may need professional help. Thanks Helpful 73 Not Helpful 23

You Might Also Like

• ↑ Annie Lin, MBA. Life & Career Coach. Expert Interview. 25 November 2019.
• ↑ https://www.helpguide.org/articles/addictions/how-to-quit-smoking.htm
• ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235264752030143X
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/
• ↑ https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/
• ↑ https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/moderate-drinking.htm

About This Article

Medical Disclaimer

The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, examination, diagnosis, or treatment. You should always contact your doctor or other qualified healthcare professional before starting, changing, or stopping any kind of health treatment.

Read More...

To get rid of a bad habit, first make a note every time you do it so you can figure out what triggers your bad habit. Then, do your best to avoid those triggers! Additionally, try to replace your bad habit with a good one, like eating fruits or vegetables when you have the urge to smoke. You can also wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it when you catch yourself engaging in your bad habit, since associating the habit with a negative feeling may help you curb it. You might also consider telling somebody what habit you’re trying to break, since being accountable can keep you on track. To learn how to stop smoking, drinking too much, procrastinating, or biting your fingernails, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

Why is breaking a habit so difficult? Because habits are made up of three components: a trigger (for example, feeling stressed), a behavior (browsing the Internet), and a reward (feeling sated). Each time we reinforce the reward, we become more likely to repeat the behavior. This is why old habits are so hard to break — it takes more than self-control to change them. But after 20 years of studying the behavioral neuroscience of how habits form, and the best way to tackle them, researchers have found a surprisingly natural solution: using mindfulness training to make people more aware of the “reward” reinforcing their behavior. Doing so helps people tap into what is driving their habit in the first place. Once this happens, they are more easily able to change their association with the “reward” from a positive one to a more accurate (and often negative) one.

Breaking habits is hard. We all know this, whether we’ve failed our latest diet (again), or felt the pull to refresh our Instagram feed instead of making progress on a work project that is past due. This is largely because we are constantly barraged by stimuli engineered to make us crave and consume , stimuli that hijack the reward-based learning system  in our brains designed initially for survival.

• JB Jud Brewer MD PhD is an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in anxiety and habit change. He is an associate professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health and Medical School and the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits .  Dr. Brewer has posted 20+ short videos on how to develop resilience and work with Coronavirus-related mental health issues on his YouTube Channel .    

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How to break bad habits: 7 tips to succeed

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What is a bad habit?

8 bad habit examples, how are habits formed, how to recognize bad habits, the importance of breaking habits, how long does it take to break a bad habit, how to change a bad habit: 7 tips, slow and steady.

The alarm clock goes off, and you head straight to the kitchen for coffee. On your way to work, you tune into the news or scan through social media. Once you sit down to work, you immediately dive into emails. Your day is full of habits, some so deeply embedded that you probably don’t even notice them. 

Habits are a big part of your day. Some help you put your brain on autopilot, aiding efficiency and reducing your mental load. Other habits keep you healthy, like eating a balanced lunch or hitting the gym on your way home from work. Frequently snacking sugary candies or opening social media to distract yourself from a challenging task have the opposite effect. And habits that are compulsions or addictions, like smoking or overspending, can even threaten your well-being. 

The key to learning how to break bad habits starts with understanding how habits form and endure, giving you tools to reinforce good behaviors and curb bad ones.

A bad habit is a routine that persists even when it’s harmful to your well-being , according to a meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology. 

Sometimes, you might intentionally engage in bad habits, like procrastinating on a difficult assignment despite its importance. You know it’s not a good habit , but the temporary feeling of relief convinces you otherwise. Other times, bad habits may be more subtle, like the frequent urge to check emails or social media when faced with challenging tasks. 

Over time, such habits can diminish your ability to concentrate effectively , impacting your productivity and potential for learning and professional growth.

Bad habits aren’t always easy to spot. They can creep into your daily routines without you even realizing it. Let’s spotlight a list of bad habits that may hinder your ability to show up at work and protect your well-being. 

Learning how to stop bad habits starts with awareness. Recognizing their influence on daily life will help you create targeted strategies for positive new behavior.

While many of your habits form unconsciously, each one passes through a three-step neurological process . It begins when your brain links a cue to a behavior. The connection is reinforced through repetition, which stimulates a reward. Let’s break it down further: 

• Cue: This is the first spark that ignites a habit loop. It occurs when your brain identifies a distinct trigger associated with a specific action. This cue serves as your reminder, prompting your brain to prepare to act. 
• Routine: Once your brain recognizes the cue, you transition into a specific set of actions. This routine might become so ingrained that the behavior is automated, requiring little conscious effort.  
• Reward: You feel an emotional or physical payoff after completing the action. This reward reinforces the cue-routine loop, making it more likely the behavior will be repeated the next time the cue is encountered. 

Let’s imagine a common daily occurrence. A ping noise notifies you of a new message on Slack. The sound cues you to instinctively open the messenger app. The ensuing satisfaction feels rewarding, like quickly clearing a notification or responding to a critical message. Over time, you automatically check messages as they roll in, steering your focus and slowing down your productivity.

Some habits can subtly become part of your daily routine. They may be so embedded in your approach to work it’s difficult to step back and see the negative impact on your growth and well-being. Here are four telltale signs of bad habits: 

• Disruption in your productivity: Tasks constantly take longer than they should, or you regularly fall behind schedule. Frequently checking emails, grabbing your phone to distract yourself, or engaging in too much office chatter are examples of behaviors that break your focus. 
• Physical and mental exhaustion: Feeling tired all the time without a clear reason could result from bad routines, like regularly staying up late, eating too much junk food, or not getting enough physical exercise . 
• Decreased satisfaction: If tasks or activities you previously enjoyed now feel burdensome, it might indicate that a bad habit is diminishing your energy. For example, constantly multitasking might drain your enthusiasm for exciting work tasks. 
• Avoidance behavior: Regularly sidestepping specific tasks or responsibilities is a red flag for an avoidance habit. This may be a coping mechanism to dodge challenging or uncomfortable tasks. If you tend to delay high-priority tasks for easier ones, you may have a procrastination habit that covers up a fear of failure or perfectionism . 

Paying attention to the signs or asking for guidance will help you learn how to change a bad habit. And being proactive in identifying these bad habits ensures a more balanced life and professional growth.

When left unchecked, bad habits can erode the quality of your work, strain relationships, and hinder learning and growth. Quitting bad habits isn’t just about improving your productivity. It’s about improving your overall well-being. Here’s why learning how to get rid of a bad habit will lead to deeper professional satisfaction:

• Preserves professional reputation: Proactively addressing bad habits helps solidify your standing as a dependable team member. Demonstrating active learning and self-improvement reinforces trust and can open doors to better yourself with new opportunities and bigger responsibilities. 
• Protects your health: Prioritizing good sleep , regular physical exercise, and balanced nutrition contributes to solid physical and mental health. These positive new habits can lead to increased energy, better focus, and overall well-being. 
• Enhanced productivity: Replacing habits like frequent task-switching with focused work sessions or substituting unlimited access to your cell phone with scheduled breaks streamlines your work. Setting clear priorities and reducing distractions creates space for better output and more quality free time.
• Improved self-confidence: Kicking old habits and developing new routines is difficult. The sense of accomplishment you get from positive behavior change will fill you with confidence to take on new challenges head-on.

Learning how to break a bad habit and adopt a healthier one varies widely from one person to the next. A report published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, which observed 96 participants, found that the time required for habit formation ranged from 18 to 254 days . Although breaking a habit doesn’t have a set time frame, replacing it with a healthier habit falls into this same time frame. 

A crucial insight from the study was the emphasis on consistency. While participants occasionally slipped up, staying focused on positive change was pivotal to lasting healthy habits . So, if you’re frustrated with the process, stay consistent — it’ll pay off in the long run.

Learning how to get rid of a bad habit isn’t a simple feat. With self-awareness and determination, you’ll be on your way to positive habit change. Here are seven simple ways you can replace bad behaviors with constructive habits:

1. Understand why you want to change

Figuring out how to break a habit that negatively impacts you starts with introspection. Identify the reasons you want to change a habit. Maybe you want to improve your professional performance, build better relationships, or enhance your confidence. 

Whatever it is, understanding the “why” behind your journey will be a powerful intrinsic motivator in tough times. Write it down somewhere to remind yourself why you want to kick a bad habit in the first place.

2. Acknowledge the process of change

Change is gradual. Learn to celebrate small victories along the way and set up barriers to curb negative self-talk and overcome setbacks. 

3. Out of sight, out of mind

Reduce exposure to cues that trigger the bad habit. If you struggle to turn away from social media, remove apps from your home screen, use focus apps, or put your phone in another room. Having your phone in your line of sight can hinder your performance — so try putting it and any other distractors in another room.

4. Make it unattractive

Nip the reward in the bud. Associating the negative consequences with the bad habit may motivate more self-control . For example, remind yourself of the lost free time or increased worry when you procrastinate. 

5. Make it difficult

Increase the effort required to engage in bad habits. If you’re trying to reduce snacking on junk food, don’t keep it at home or in the office. The added effort to feed your bad habit might deter you. 

6. Replace bad with good

Rather than focusing on quitting an unwanted habit cold turkey, concentrate on building a positive new habit in its place. Introducing a positive behavior that occupies the same space as the negative one can create a more natural transition. 

For instance, if you want to stop checking social media before bed, consider replacing the behavior with a few minutes of meditation or reading. The approach will help you reinforce reward and positive outcomes. 

7. Seek support

Working with a professional coach specializing in career or behavioral coaching can give you the support you need. Their expertise can fast-track your progress, helping you build realistic action plans and giving you accountability to charge forward.

You didn’t form bad habits overnight. It took time and repetition to cement them in your routines. Learning how to break bad habits will take time, too. 

Give yourself the courtesy of self-compassion and patience. A little introspection, empathy, and dedication to positive change will keep you on course — whether it takes 18 or 254 days to reach the finish line.

Transform your life

Make meaningful changes and become the best version of yourself. BetterUp's professional Coaches are here to support your personal growth journey.

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

Building good habits in your life (and ditching bad ones)

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Essay on Bad Habits

Students are often asked to write an essay on Bad Habits in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Bad Habits

Understanding bad habits.

Bad habits are actions we repeat that harm us. They can be physical, like biting nails, or mental, like procrastination.

Why Bad Habits Form

The impact of bad habits.

Bad habits can harm our health, relationships, and productivity. They prevent us from reaching our full potential.

Overcoming Bad Habits

To overcome bad habits, we must understand why we do them. Then, we can replace them with good habits that benefit us.

250 Words Essay on Bad Habits

Introduction to bad habits.

Bad habits are often the result of patterns of behavior that have become ingrained in our daily routines. They are actions that we engage in repeatedly, usually without giving much thought to their consequences. These habits can range from the seemingly innocuous, such as nail-biting, to the more harmful, such as smoking or excessive drinking.

The Psychology Behind Bad Habits

Understanding the psychology behind bad habits is crucial. They often serve as coping mechanisms for stress or discomfort, providing a temporary sense of relief or distraction. The brain’s reward system plays a significant role in their formation and persistence. When a behavior triggers the release of ‘feel-good’ chemicals like dopamine, it reinforces the habit loop, making it harder to break.

Bad habits can have far-reaching impacts on our lives. They can negatively affect our physical health, mental wellbeing, productivity, and relationships. For instance, procrastination can lead to stress and poor performance, while excessive screen time can lead to sleep disturbances and social disconnection.

Breaking the Cycle

Breaking bad habits requires conscious effort, patience, and persistence. It involves understanding the triggers, replacing the habit with a healthier alternative, and rewarding oneself for progress. Cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness, and self-compassion can also be beneficial in this process.

500 Words Essay on Bad Habits

Introduction.

Bad habits are behaviors we engage in repetitively, often unconsciously, that are detrimental to our physical, mental, or emotional well-being. They range from minor annoyances such as nail-biting to life-threatening addictions like smoking and drug use. The complexity of bad habits lies in their deeply ingrained nature, making them difficult to break. However, understanding their psychological underpinnings can provide us with the tools to combat them effectively.

The Psychology of Bad Habits

Bad habits are often rooted in our brain’s reward system. The brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, whenever we engage in activities it perceives as beneficial. Unfortunately, this system can be hijacked by harmful behaviors that provide immediate gratification, such as overeating or excessive use of social media.

Another psychological aspect of bad habits is their association with stress and negative emotions. Many people resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as alcohol consumption or compulsive shopping, to deal with feelings of anxiety, sadness, or boredom. These habits serve as temporary distractions but can lead to long-term harm.

Bad habits can have far-reaching consequences. Physically, they can lead to health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and lung cancer. Mentally, they can contribute to conditions like depression and anxiety. Socially, they can strain relationships and hinder productivity. Moreover, the financial cost of maintaining certain bad habits, such as smoking or gambling, can be substantial.

Breaking Bad Habits

Breaking bad habits is a challenging but achievable task. It requires self-awareness, determination, and a strategic approach. The first step is recognizing the habit and understanding its triggers. This can be achieved through mindful observation and introspection.

In conclusion, bad habits are deeply ingrained behaviors that can have significant impacts on our well-being. They are often rooted in our brain’s reward system and can serve as unhealthy coping mechanisms for stress and negative emotions. However, with self-awareness, determination, and a strategic approach, we can break these habits and replace them with healthier alternatives. Understanding the psychology of bad habits is a crucial step towards achieving this goal.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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How to (Finally) Break That Bad Habit

Do you have a habit (or two) that you really want to break, but have struggled to in the past? Maybe you spend too much time on your phone, eat unhealthy foods, or overspend on mobile games and online shopping. Whatever the habit is, there are a few steps you’re probably skipping, according to the experts, that will help you finally break it.

Mostly, it all comes down to the cues that lead you to perform the behavior. When you do the behavior over and over again in the same context without thinking, that’s when it becomes a habit. If you haven’t yet read our story about how to build new habits, a lot of the tips in there are relevant to breaking a habit—with a few minor changes and added challenges laid out here, due to your history with the behavior.

The first step to breaking a habit is the same as building one—make a list of the behaviors you’d like to stop doing and put them into priority order. If you try to do everything at once, you’ll likely just get overwhelmed and give up, says Alana Mendelsohn, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. Even worse, when we’re stressed out or tired, we instinctively revert back to our established habits—making it harder to break the ones you no longer want.

“I think something that is useful to keep in mind is the longer a time period you’ve had living the way that you have, the harder it’s going to be to change that,” Mendelsohn says.

Once you’ve made your list, you need to think about your history with each habit: When did it start? What triggers it? If you’ve tried to break it previously, what approaches did you take that didn’t work? 

“If you want to change a behavior, then try to identify what might be a trigger that generates the behavior,” says Wendy Wood, provost professor emerita of psychology and business at the University of Southern California and the author of  Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick . “We tend to overestimate the extent to which our behavior is driven by our goals and desires, and we underestimate the extent to which it’s driven by habit.” A big part of this can be environmental factors such as marketing and advertising: We see an ad and think it’s something that we want to do or need to have, not that we’re only thinking about it now because we saw the ad.

The main problem people run into when reviewing their history of a habit, Mendelsohn says, is that they may not know what questions to ask or be honest with themselves about the answers. If you find that’s the case for you, she says “a therapist can be incredibly helpful.” Especially if your habit was established when you were younger. “So much of our experience of developing routines and habits is shaped by our families and schools.”

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James Clear, author of  Atomic Habits , adds that looking at data can be a good starting point. “For fitness habits, it could be things like your  Apple Watch or  Whoop band or MyFitnessPal. There are many different ways to get data,” he says. “It also can be true for habits that maybe you wouldn’t think about tracking.” For example, looking at your calendar for the past year to determine whether you spent enough time at home with your family, or whether you were traveling for work too much. “If you’re so busy that you never give yourself time to think about what you’re doing ... it’s really hard to improve, because you’re just busy repeating the same thing again and again. You don’t have a chance to look at the bigger picture.”

Once you’ve done your review of the habits you’d like to break, you should pick one of them to start with.

“I look at a number of the challenges a patient is facing and then ask myself, ‘Which one is in the driver’s seat?’” says Mendelsohn. “Meaning if I tackle one of these problems, are the rest of them likely to get better?”

The next step is to decide how you’re going to go about breaking the habit you’ve chosen, based on your history with it and the context or cues that lead to you performing the behavior. Here are a few examples:

Say you spend too much money and this is the habit you would like to stop. You’ve determined that you started overspending when you added your credit cards to your Apple Wallet or PayPal. This then made it extremely easy to buy things when you saw an ad on social media or a friend sent a link to something they thought you would like. “You want spending money to be as difficult and thoughtful as possible,” Wood says. “Putting all your credit cards on your phone that you carry everywhere is counterproductive—you are further automating the process of spending money.” To fix this, you decide to remove your cards from all online payment services so each time you want to buy something, you have to physically go and pull out the card, which then gives you a bit more time to think about the purchase itself. You could also ask friends not to send you products and unsubscribe from any product marketing emails.

If you’re trying to check your phone less often, David Kadavy, author of  Mind Management, Not Time Management , suggests locking it in a lockbox for part of the day. “Make it as hard as possible to actually perform the habit,” he says. While you’re still going to get the cue to check your phone, the effort of going to the lockbox and unlocking it can help block the behavior from triggering. Or, say you’re trying to check social media less often: “Just delete the social media apps from your phone,” says Kadavy. “Block them with the parental controls or, at the very least, don’t have them on your home screen.”

Clear has a great example of a negative eating habit from his own life. In the house he used to live in, there was a McDonald’s right after the highway exit on his way home. He found himself stopping there multiple times a week. “I looked at myself after the last one, and I was like, ‘Am I going to do this every time I drive home? Am I just going to stop here and eat here every single time?’” he says. “Ultimately, what I decided to do was to start taking a different path home. If I went left off of the exit instead of right, it would take an extra three minutes, but I wouldn’t pass the McDonald’s. I changed the environment so that I wouldn’t be exposed to the cue. That added enough friction and enough separation that the habit would change.”

“A lot of people tend to procrastinate, then rely on anxiety and fear to motivate them to get tasks done,” says Mendelsohn. “This can be effective at getting things done, but at the cost of causing unnecessary stress. Breaking tasks down into smaller ones can be a harder strategy to implement at first, but more sustainable in the long run.” To help you get started, Mendelsohn suggests writing these tasks down using a pen and paper, as it can be “really helpful for people to keep their organizational strategies separate from the digital tools we use all day.”

Sometimes, substituting a negative behavior for a more desirable one can work at blocking it—but, Wood says you have to know what the cue is, and the alternative behavior has to be both easy and rewarding. Say you’ve decided to drink a glass of water whenever you have the urge to look at your phone, instead of locking it away somewhere or putting it facedown next to you. “For most people, drinking a glass of water isn’t going to be as interesting as looking at their phones, so I don’t know if that’s going to work particularly well,” says Wood.

If your chosen way to try and break your habit isn’t working, maybe it’s time to try something else. Another thing to keep in mind is that “for some specific behaviors, like quitting smoking, multiple attempts is actually a good thing,” Wood says. “Because most people who ultimately quit have to keep trying until they figure out the right thing that will work for them.”

So don’t get discouraged if it’s taking a while to break your habit. Sometimes you just need to approach it a different way or dig deeper into the context or cues that lead you to perform it in the first place.

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5 Science-Approved Ways to Break a Bad Habit

H aving habits can often be a good thing. When you drive to work for example, you don’t need to wonder whether you should turn left or right; the route becomes habit.

“We want the brain to learn how to do those things without energy and effort,” says Russell Poldrack, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. “Habits are an adaptive feature of how the brain works.”

But sometimes, habits can lead us astray—whether it’s turning to comfort food when we’re sad, or taking a cigarette break when stressed.

Since habits take practice and repetition to form, the same is true when it comes to breaking them, says Elliot Berkman, director of the University of Oregon’s Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab. In order to eliminate those pesky habits —whatever they may be—start with these five strategies.

Sink your stress levels

Many habits—including smoking or excess sugar consumption —involve the brain’s dopamine (or reward) system. Dopamine is a “feel-good” chemical that transmits signals between neurons in the brain. The first time you engage in a new, “rewarding” behavior, you get a euphoric feeling from doing it as a result of a dopamine release, notes Poldrack. This leads to changes in both the connections between neurons and the brain systems responsible for actions—and can largely account for why we start to form bad habits in the first place.

Many of these rewarding stimuli—like sugar or substances—are powerful, too. And our physiological reaction to them in present day can be linked all the way back to evolution, says Poldrack. In the cavemen days, meat wasn’t salted, dry-rubbed or grilled to perfection. “Our brains aren’t well-equipped to deal with the big rush one gets from these sorts of things,” Poldrack says. As a result, the frontal lobe, the brain’s “control center,” gets overwhelmed, he says.

“You’re more likely to do the thing you don’t want to do when you’re stressed out,” Poldrack says.

There are however, ways to address the root cause of these seemingly detrimental habits .

Some solutions? Try to get more sleep , exercise regularly and opt for stress reduction techniques like meditation , which can all work to increase willpower and overall brain health, says Poldrack.

Know your cues

Habits, Berkman says, have three main parts: a cue, a routine and a reward.

Cues are the context where you tend to engage in the behavior. If you’re a smoker for example, the cue might be work breaks. If you’re a dessert aficionado, it might be simply scouring the dessert menu. “You’re most likely to relapse in the context of when you’ve done it before,” Berkman says.

Knowing your triggers can help you avoid them. Berkman suggests that smokers dispose of items like ashtrays that might remind them of their habit or people who are trying to cut back on drinking should avoid walking by the bar they always pop into for happy hour.

Capitalizing on major life changes can also help break an unhealthy habit. While you might think a cross-country move or a new job is no time to introduce even more changes into your life, Berkman notes that shifts in lifestyle can actually be the ideal opportunity for eliminating a vice. “You’re going into new contexts and situations, so you don’t have those same cues—it’s a chance to form new habits,” he says.

If you’re used to lighting up on your way to work for instance, moving to a new city gives you a chance to take public transportation or to dig into a new podcast instead of a pack of cigarettes , because you are in a new environment, says Berkman.

Replace a bad habit with a good one

Instead of trying to stop doing something—“It’s hard to stop a behavior,” says Berkman— start doing something else.

“We are action-oriented creatures,” says Berkman. Some studies have shown that the more you suppress your thoughts, the more likely you are to think about that thought or even revert back to that bad habit. A 2008 study in Appetite , found that those who suppressed their thoughts about eating chocolate exhibited a behavioral rebound effect, where they consumed significantly more chocolate than those who didn’t. Similarly, a 2010 study published in Psychological Science found that smokers who tried to restrain their thoughts about smoking wound up thinking about it even more.

If you’re a smoker and you tell yourself not to smoke, your brain still hears “smoke,” Berkman says. Conversely, if you tell yourself to chew gum every time you want a cigarette, your brain has a more positive, concrete action to do, he notes. Similarly, if 5 p.m. has been linked with a glass of wine for years, use it as a time to, instead, double down on hydration and make sure the fridge is stocked with seltzers, cold water and lemon, Berkman says .

But forming a new habit takes time and commitment, so don’t be discouraged if it takes longer than you might expect. A 2010 study published in The European Journal of Social Psychology found it took an average of 66 days for a behavior to change (though time varied from 18 to 254 days).

Have a better reason for quitting

Even if you replace a “bad” habit with a better one, sometimes the original vice will have a stronger biological “reward” than its substitute, Berkman says. For example, your brain knows that gum is not nicotine and therefore won’t produce the same euphoric feeling that smoking a cigarette would, he says. This is where the importance of having an intrinsic motivation comes into play.

Intellectually, we know that quitting smoking is good for our health and limiting how many burgers we eat might help us lose weight. But rooting habit changes in specific and personal reasons—giving up smoking for good may mean spending more years with your family or eating healthier may give you more energy for those outdoor adventures you used to enjoy—provides a stronger dose of motivation, says Berkman.

Set better goals

Rather than focusing on a more general goal —like I will not grab a cookie on the way out of the cafeteria— Poldrack suggests imagining more specifically how you’ll implement this goal into your daily life.

Examining how you’ve responded to the situation in the past and determining what you can do to avoid the cookies in the future, might be all it takes to break the habit, says Poldrack. This may mean simply not walking by the rack of sweets itself.

“It’s always going to be easier to react based on something you’ve already planned out in the past versus trying to come up with a new plan on the fly,” Poldrack says.

Plus, thinking about how exactly you’re going to do something helps you develop the mindset that you can do something, he notes. And that’s half the battle.

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How to Get Rid of a Bad Habit (Examples)

What is a bad habit? A bad habit is a habit that damages you and does more harm than good to your life.

Smoking, for example, is a bad habit because of the effects it has on your health and on your relationships. It can hurt your relationships because, even if you are in a group of smoker friends, you probably also have some non-smoker friends who will be offended if you want to smoke around them.

Another bad habit is drinking excessively . Having a drink now and then is okay, but excessive drinking leads to bad health and destroys your relationships and financial success. Your financial success is harmed whenever you drink because (1) drinking costs money and (2) you can’t be very productive while dead drunk or hungover.

Drinking and smoking just wipe out the four pillars - health, wealth, love, and happiness - like a wrecking ball.

Other bad habits include eating fatty or greasy foods commonly, staying up too late, and wasting too much time checking your social media accounts instead of working on things that would make you feel really fulfilled.

When most people think of bad habits they think about stuff that they do to their body, but there are other bad habits, too. For example, using fillers in your speeches such as “uh” and “um” is considered a bad habit. Holding grudges is another bad habit. Hanging around certain people can also be considered a bad habit if they are a negative influence on you.

Take a piece of paper and divide it up into three columns. In the center column, write down five to ten bad habits right now that you can identify in your life. This is the first step to intentionally getting rid of them.

Intention is important because you have to intentionally and mindfully want to get rid of them.

Positive reinforcement

I’ll tell you a bit about positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement goes back hundreds of years.

Basically, it's our brain’s way of saying, “Hey, I'm hungry. What can we do?” You see food, you eat it, and you feel good about doing that because the brain is flooded with dopamine as a reward.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter generated in the brain whenever we do something beneficial to our survival. That good feeling of reward really helps our motivation, because your brain says to you, “Hey, this is awesome, let's do it more often."

This reward system allows your brain to say, "Next time we're hungry, how about we eat some food?" The reward happens every time you eat to satisfy your hunger, which gets compounded over many years of your life. Eventually, a very strong habit is formed. This is how positive reinforcement can create a habit - a reward every time you do something will put you in the habit to do that thing.

Positive reinforcement can also create bad habits.

For example, smoking.

People start smoking for various reasons - they feel bad, they're hanging around their friends that are peer pressured, etc. - so they do it, even though that the first experience of smoking is painful (you cough, wheeze, and your body just tells you it’s not good).

But why do they continue?

Because they are encouraged by peers; they start feeling “cool” and popular. They feel rebellious and unique, which all comes together to generate a dopamine rush in the brain.

Of course, nicotine plays its part in it as well, but it’s not nearly as addictive as feeling accepted and appreciated by your peers - even if you are doing something negative, even that is better than no attention at all.

This dopamine rush gives a positive reinforcement, which later turns smoking into a habit which is very difficult to quit many years later.

Here’s another food example of positive reinforcement: if you are feeling sad one day and you eat one box of ice cream, and it makes you feel good (sugar always helps)... the next thing you know, you start craving ice cream every time you feel sad.

By now I assume you wrote down your 10 habits that you want to get rid of in the center column of your paper.

The next thing you need to do is write down what triggers that habit next it in the left column.

When you smoke, what causes you to smoke? When you eat ice cream, what causes you to eat ice cream? You might smoke because you're stressed, or you might smoke just because that's what you do at that time of day, or just because you're with friends.

Understanding triggers is really important because it's hard to get rid of a bad habit if you cannot find the trigger.

Every habit has a trigger, and the trigger was started back when the positive reinforcement began. The trigger could be hunger or hanging around a group of friends. The trigger could even be that you get home from work and see alcohol sitting in your fridge.

Finally, write down the rewards that you experience for that habit in the right column. Perhaps it’s a dopamine burst or the feeling of acceptance among your friends.

We can use positive reinforcement to get rid of a bad habit by destroying the trigger. If you get rid of that alcohol from your fridge, when you get home you’ll be less likely to drink alcohol.

Stop hanging around those friends that you always smoke around - or maybe go for a walk at that time of day when you like to smoke. Find the triggers in your life and try to get rid of them.

Removing the trigger will also destroy the rest of the positive reinforcement, which will crumble your habit.

You hang out with friends, you smoke, and then you feel better. If you get rid of the hanging around with friends part, that just completely demolishes the rest of your habit: the trigger, the behavior, and the reward all go away.

There was a study done on smokers where the researchers wanted to find and analyze what they could do to smokers to make them not smoke.

They achieved their goal by encouraging those smokers to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is living in the moment and being conscious about what you're doing. A lot of people, when smoking, are doing it mindlessly.

They're not even thinking about smoking; it's just a habit. Mindfulness helped the smokers break their habit because they started thinking about what smoking was doing to their body.

This was 3 to 6 times as effective when the smoker was a mindful and curious person. These were the people that were curious about what smoking was doing to their body and wanted to know, "What is this really doing to my lungs? What is this doing to my family? What is this doing to make me a better person?"

Self-improvement is really important because you need to have that metacognition to think about how you're thinking to make yourself better and overcome a bad habit.

Mindfulness was the answer in the results of the study. With every breath they took in of the cigarette, they were thinking, "This is filling my lungs with all kinds of negative toxins, and I'm literally taking years off my life statistically.” This helped them to quit.

Mindfulness helps you understand things and ask yourself questions like, "What is this thing that I’m doing? What is this doing to my relationships?"

You have to understand your habits and reverse engineer them. Think, "Is this profiting me, or am I losing money? Am I lowering the value of my friendships? Am I losing years of my life?"

Try asking yourself these questions regarding the habits on your own list. You need to understand what the habit is doing to yourself, your health, your wealth, your love, and your happiness.

Positive punishment

Positive punishment is a lot like positive reinforcement, only instead of a reward, you get a tax or some kind of bad consequence for your actions. For example, if you accidentally burned your hand every time you lit a cigarette, your brain will eventually rewrite itself to think, "Oh man, I gotta go back outside and burn myself again?"

I'm not suggesting in any way that you should do this to yourself, but I'm trying to help you use this as a concept.

You need some positive punishment: something to make you reconsider your actions and think, "Oh, instead of maybe just going outside and smoking, I'll go outside and smoke with a person I do not like."

Before you even started thinking about smoking, you'll start thinking “Oh my, when lunch comes I gotta go out and talk to that person. They're going to call me out on something I did wrong.”

Or you can just hide your pack of cigarettes in a hard-to-get place, and every time you feel the urge to smoke you go there and take just one cigarette. Then you have to put in extra effort each time until you lose the motivation bother doing it.

I have written a lot about smoking so far but this works for any bad habit you might have. 

To be more general, positive punishment can be making a bad trigger for your unwanted action. This will prevent you and make you think twice before doing it.

Just be careful with the positive punishment though. If you do it long enough, or in the wrong way, it's actually called, "learned helplessness."

Learned helplessness is when someone does something long enough badly and they say, "I've done it, I've tried it for 10 years, and I can't stop smoking."

It's actually a very strong psychological condition in which you feel like whatever you do, nothing's going to happen - and of course it’s not... as long as you don’t really want to make a real change.

But don’t worry; there are millions of people with this condition - and I call it a “condition” because it’s a mindset that really needs to be solved.

Now, there are certain situations in which whatever you do, you're not going to have a big impact. But you need to understand there are ways to stop any negative habits that you might have.

There are ways of committing and not giving in to temptation for at least a week. That's where positive punishment comes in - if you do it wrong, you'll actually teach yourself that no matter what you do, it's not going to change your situation.

But positive punishment does work if used correctly.

You just need to find a way to make your habit less exciting so you can turn it into something that you don't really want to do. That has to come from within; it’s hard to make other people accountable for you. You have to make yourself accountable for yourself.

Related posts:

• Schedules of Reinforcement (Examples)
• Operant Conditioning (Examples + Research)
• Replace Bad Habits with Good Habits
• Fixed Ratio Reinforcement Schedule (Examples)
• Variable Interval Reinforcement Schedule (Examples)

Reference this article:

About The Author

What is a Habit?

How to Get Rid of a Bad Habit

How to Replace a Habit

How to Create a Habit

10 Morning Habits

12 Millionaire Habits

10 Great Relationship Habits

10 Happy Habits

10 Healthy Habits

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9 Bad Eating Habits and How to Break Them

Nighttime snacking, emotional eating, junk-food binges — sound familiar? Break these common bad eating habits for quick weight loss results.

It’s not just willpower, or a lack thereof, that makes us overeat and gain weight. Sometimes, it’s that sneaky bad habit you developed without even realizing it, like dashing out the door some mornings without breakfast, or munching chips in front of your favorite TV show. The next thing you know, one little bad habit can equal out to a lot of weight gain. The worst part is, you might not even realize what you’re doing to your diet.

Here, quick fixes for some of the most common bad eating and lifestyle habits that can cause you to pack on pounds.

The Bad Habit: Mindless Eating

Cornell University food psychologist Brian Wansink, PhD, discovered that the larger the plate or bowl you eat from, the more you unknowingly consume. In one recent study, Wansink found that moviegoers given extra-large containers of stale popcorn still ate 45 percent more than those snacking on fresh popcorn out of smaller containers holding the same amount.

The Fix: Eat from smaller dishes. Try swapping out your large dinner plate for a salad plate, and never eat straight from a container or package.

The Bad Habit: Nighttime Noshing

Diet folklore suggests that eating at night is almost never a good idea if you want to lose weight . Although many experts say this old adage is pure myth, a new animal study backs up the idea that it’s not only what you eat but also when you eat that counts. Researchers at Northwestern University found that mice given high-fat foods during the day (when these nocturnal animals should have been sleeping) gained significantly more weight than mice given the same diet at night.

The Fix: The diet take-away here? After dinner, teach yourself to think of the kitchen as being closed for the night, and brush your teeth — you’ll want to eat less with a newly cleaned mouth. If a craving hits, wait 10 minutes. If you’re still truly hungry, reach for something small like string cheese or a piece of fruit.

The Bad Habit: Endless Snacking

Here’s a bad habit many are guilty of: snacking round-the-clock, often on high-calorie foods that are full of empty carbs. A recent study at the University of North Carolina found that it isn’t just a problem for adults: kids are snacking more and more often on unhealthy junk food including salty chips, soda, and candy.

The Fix: Keep only healthy snacks within reach, such as hummus, carrots and cucumber slices, air-popped popcorn, yogurt, and almonds, says Jessica Crandall, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. Don’t stock your desk or pantry with potato chips or cookies you know you can’t resist.

The Bad Habit: Skipping Breakfast

You know that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, but with so many other tasks competing for your attention, you may decide you don’t have time to eat. When you skip meals, your metabolism begins to slow, Crandall explains, plus, breakfast gives you that boost of energy you need to take on your day. Without this fuel, chances are, you’ll just overeat later. A new study of Chinese schoolchildren found that those who skipped breakfast gained significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who ate a morning meal.

The Fix: Have ready healthy breakfast foods you can consume on the run, Crandall says. If you’re rushed, try easy items such as whole fruit, yogurt, homemade cereal bars, and smoothies.

The Bad Habit: Emotional Eating

You had a bad day at the office, and when you get home, you open the refrigerator and eat — not a good diet strategy. “You put food in your mouth as a coping mechanism,” Crandall says. A number of studies confirm that emotions, both positive and negative, can cause people to eat more than they should, an easy weight-loss stumbling block.

The Fix: Find a new stress-buster, Crandall says. “If you’re stressed out at work, when you get home, take a walk instead of eating or call a friend who will be empathetic," she suggests. "You can vent and take some of the stress off your shoulders.” Choose any activity you like as long as it keeps you out of the kitchen.

The Bad Habit: Eating Too Quickly

Wolfing down your food, whether you’re snacking or eating a meal, doesn’t give your brain time to catch up with your stomach. Your brain doesn’t signal that you’re full until about 15 to 20 minutes after you’ve started eating. If you gulp down your meal in 10 minutes or less, you could end up eating way more than you need. In a study of 3,200 men and women, Japanese researchers found that eating too quickly was strongly associated with being overweight.

The Fix: To slow down your eating , physically put your fork down between bites, take smaller bites, and be sure to chew each bite thoroughly. Also, drinking water throughout your meal will help you slow down and feel fuller as you go.

The Bad Habit: Not Getting Enough Sleep

Could not getting enough sleep ruin your weight-loss efforts? Yes, according to a recent analysis by researchers in Tokyo. They found that men and women who slept five hours or less a night were more likely to gain weight than those who slept seven hours or more.

The Fix: Establish a routine for yourself, and try to go to bed and wake up at about the same times every day, even on weekends. Keep the bedroom dark and comfortable, and avoid TV or computers for at least an hour before bed. If you need extra motivation to shut off the lights early, remember that the better you sleep, the better the number when you step on the scale in the morning.

The Bad Habit: Vegging Out With Video Games

If you’re watching TV, sitting in front of a computer, or playing video games, it’s not only mindless snacking in front of the screen that you have to worry about. A new study found that teens who played video games for just one hour ate more the rest of the day, which resulted in weight gain. The researchers weren’t sure why playing video games caused the boys to eat more, but said it’s possible that sitting in front of a computer all day could have a similar effect on adults and lead to snacking.

The Fix: Take frequent breaks when you’re in front of the computer — get up and walk around the room or office every 15 to 30 minutes. When the workday or your favorite TV show ends, remember to carefully monitor what you consume to you don’t overstuff yourself.

The Bad Habit: Eating Junk Food

You know junk food doesn’t help your waistline, but the effect may be worse than you think. Several animal studies have found that rat’s brains find high-fat, high-sugar foods to be addictive — much like cocaine or heroin. Another study found that eating comfort food actually triggers feelings of happiness in humans.

The Fix: The solution isn’t to eliminate your favorite indulgences from your diet — that will only make you crave them more, Crandall says. The key to weight-loss success is to identify what you really want, and indulge in your favorite foods in moderation as special treats, not every day.