how to get rid of bad habits essay

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.   

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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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. 

One irksome feature of habits can be that we often do not notice that we are engaging in them moment-by-moment. In fact, research has found that nearly half of our actions may be automatic, which can explain why breaking bad habits can be so challenging. In the same way you might not remember making the conscious choice to brush your teeth this morning, you probably do not actively choose to check your phone throughout the day.

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 .

Whether good or bad, repeated behaviors can become wired into the parts of the brain responsible for habits and routines. We often engage in habits without thinking, and in the case of bad habits, this can make them particularly hard to break. However, it may be possible to rewire these brain patterns by understanding the habit loop and addressing each of its components, such as by eliminating the cues, replacing the old habit with a new one, and implementing reward systems and habit trackers. If you’re struggling to break bad habits, therapies like CBT and MBCT might be worth considering. 

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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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Bad Habits Are Hard to Break—These Tips Can Help

Sharon Basaraba is an award-winning reporter and senior scientific communications advisor for Alberta Health Services in Alberta, Canada.

webphotographeer / Getty Images

How Is a Bad Habit Reinforced?

Steps to breaking a bad habit, a word from verywell.

It often feels like everyone is talking about habits. There are supposedly a million little habits that can 'change your life', but what about getting rid of the ones that inhibit us from becoming our best selves?

Habits are a valuable part of a healthy lifestyle because good daily behaviors get locked in as they become automatic. However (though we may not always like to admit it), we all have bad habits, which can range from the merely inconvenient like biting your nails, to seriously longevity-threatening like smoking. But man are bad habits hard to break!

Unfortunately, there's no single answer that will work for everyone. However, just becoming aware of your negative behaviors is an important first step. Habits develop with repetition. Understanding the pattern that supports a bad habit can then help you short-circuit the loop.

As New York Times investigative reporter Charles Duhigg outlines in his authoritative book The Power of Habit , all undesirable behaviors share these fundamental traits:

• An external cue or trigger
• A routine that ensues
• An inherent reward for the behavior

Let's dig into some of the reasons we perpetuate our bad habits and unpack some (admittedly, probably not so easy) ways to overcome them.

At a Glance

The information in this article should help you devise a plan to break a bad habit, and perhaps substitute a healthier or more positive behavior in place of the negative one. If it's social contact you desire, plan a walk with a friend instead of drinks at the end of your work shift; if it's a calm moment in a frantic day, consider a mini- meditation session to refocus. You need to find the cue, identify the reward, and trust that very small behaviors can lead to big change.

Press Play for Advice On Breaking Habits

Hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares how to break habits and create lasting change. Click below to listen now.

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It's easy to see that a habit like brushing your teeth may be triggered by bedtime (the cue), the teeth brushing itself (the routine) follows, and the reward delivered (mouth tastes clean and fresh, bedtime readiness is underway).

Even negative behaviors offer a reward of some kind. Perhaps it's anxiety relief, as it might be in the case of cigarette smoking; maybe you crave social contact and find it most easily over too many drinks at the bar after a stressful day at work . Unless you try and dissect the powerful components of this loop, you are doomed to repeat the bad habit.

According to Duhigg's research, the only way to short-circuit the habitual pattern is to identify the cue, the routine, and the reward they deliver. Since the habit (the routine) might be more obvious as the behavior you're trying to eliminate, the greater challenge can be isolating the cue and the reward.

Try these strategies to help you interrupt the cycle of negative behavior.

"It's important to remember that any change (good or bad) can feel overwhelming. When we want to change a behavior, it can be difficult (but not impossible!) and take time. We need to be patient and kind to ourselves," says Rachel Goldman, PhD.

Find the Cue

Try writing down at least five events that occur the moment the urge for the automatic behavior hits, to reveal the cue. Ask yourself who else is on the scene, what time of day it is, or what happened immediately prior? After a few days, the cue should become evident.

Identify the Reward

This can be more difficult and may require a bit of experimentation. Try altering the routine to get a different reward. Is it the fresh air? Does it provide a distraction? Or is it an energy boost?

Be curious and open to whatever you discover. Duhigg recommends writing down your impressions or emotions as the routine wraps up. After a few tries, the reward may be revealed.

Small Changes Make a Big Difference

Sometimes a simple tweak can derail an entrenched habit. For example, a team of psychologists led by David Neal of the University of Southern California studied subjects eating popcorn at a movie theater. The cinema setting was the contextual cue.

Subjects ate the popcorn regardless of whether they were hungry, and even when it was stale. When asked to use their non-dominant hand (for example, a right-hander forced to eat with their left hand), however, the habitual eating stopped.

Published in 2011 in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , the study concludes that disrupting the automatic consumption pattern brought the subjects' eating under "intentional control." In other words, the unconscious eating habit stopped, and the subjects became more aware of what they were doing.

Replace Bad Habits With Good Ones

When we've been doing something consistently for many years it takes up a specific amount of time in our lives. That time is filled with you doing something, so when you stop a bad habit that time can suddenly feel like a void.

For instance if we bite our nails or pick at our cuticles when we're idling, we associate doing something with our hands during the in-between moments. Instead of stopping the hand centric action altogether, you might try buying a fidget toy that you can play with in order to replace the finger biting or picking.

If you tend to go out to a bar with friends after work but you want to drink less, you don't have to stop hanging out with your friends. Have fun trying out the different mocktails your local bar offers, or suggest meeting up at a place that has fun coffee and tea options in addition to alcohol.

Neal DT, Wood W, Wu M, Kurlander D. The pull of the past: when do habits persist despite conflict with motives? Pers Soc Psychol Bull . 2011;37(11):1428-37. doi:10.1177/0146167211419863

Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business . Random House. 2012.

National Institute of Health. Breaking bad habits . US National Institutes of Health Public Information Sheet. Published January 2012.

By Sharon Basaraba Sharon Basaraba is an award-winning reporter and senior scientific communications advisor for Alberta Health Services in Alberta, Canada.

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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.”

Medea Giordano

Jeremy White

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 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)

Finding the way back to you — 9 tips on how to find yourself, learn 6 habits of empathetic people to connect deeper, adjust your routine: 10 habits to boost your concentration, habit stacking: what it is and 5 examples, 10 habits of successful people you can start practicing today, 16 healthy habits you can start this week, what is the self-determination theory of motivation with examples, is mental fitness the key to aging well, similar articles, classical conditioning: how to use it to motivate your team (with examples), 50 good habits to help spur your mental well-being, 6 healthy eating tips to fuel your day, cell phone addiction: is it time to change your habits, what is willpower understanding how to exercise self-control, be your own hero: 6 tips to increase willpower, the 11 best habit tracker apps to build new behaviors, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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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. Learn more: https://newyorklifecoaching.com 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 476,876 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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Breaking Bad Habits

Overcoming negative behaviors.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Do you have habits that harm your work, career or personal life? Maybe you can't stop checking your phone in meetings, turning up late for client visits, or putting off important tasks.

Bad habits like these can damage our reputations and hold us back in our lives and careers, so it's vital that we learn how to deal with them.

In this article, we examine why we develop habits in the first place, and explore ways to rid ourselves of the unhelpful ones.

Learn how to kick your bad habits with our video and transcript .

Understanding Habits

Psychologists define habits as acquired behaviors or thought patterns, which we repeat so often that they become automatic. We develop habits because they free up our brains to do other things that require our focused attention.

Positive habits, such as waking up on time, help us to live and work more efficiently, but bad habits can have the opposite effect.

It's often hard to spot them, because they're unconscious and automatic. And bad habits can be difficult to break, because they usually start out as enjoyable or stress-relieving activities that we want to repeat.

The good news is that you can break bad habits. It just takes a little time and effort.

This article deals primarily with habitual actions and behaviors. If you need guidance on overcoming habitual thoughts , such as negative self-talk, start with our articles on Cognitive Restructuring and Beating Self-Sabotage .

How to Change Your Habits

Chances are, you have a bad habit that you'd like to beat. It could be overeating, excessive screen time, not getting enough sleep, saying "yes" too often , missing deadlines, procrastinating , breaking promises, or giving in to anger , for example.

At first, these behaviors may not bother you. But, eventually, you reach a breaking point where "enough is enough." Maybe your habit is starting to impact your co-workers or your family. Or, perhaps you suddenly realize that your habit is preventing you from achieving your career goals. Whatever the reason, there's no bad time to break a bad habit.

The nine strategies below will help you to get started, but bear in mind that there's no "one size fits all" approach: you'll likely need a combination of tactics.

Whether or not a habit is "bad" may depend on the context. Perfectionism , for example, can lead you to set unrealistic expectations for yourself, and make you unhappy. But, in jobs where safety is important, it could save your life!

1. Identify the Causes of Your Habit

Take time to examine your habit. Ask yourself when the behavior usually occurs, who you're with, what happens, how you feel, and the "payoff" that you get when you do it.

Often, bad habits develop because we perceive that they bring some benefit to our lives. For example, some people smoke or overeat because it helps them to combat stress . Other habits develop from social or cultural expectations. The habit of rejecting compliments, for example, is common in western cultures because people see it as the "polite" thing to do.

Understanding why a habit formed will help you to tackle it in the most appropriate way.

2. Increase Your Self-Awareness

Consider what you need to do, or how you could change your circumstances, to give yourself the best chance to kick your habit.

In her book, " Better Than Before ," Gretchen Rubin suggests that to do this, we need to identify our "dominant tendency" – the way that we respond to pressures like deadlines, requests and decision making.

According to Rubin, each of us tends to be either an Upholder, a Questioner, an Obliger, or a Rebel. Each tendency has different needs when breaking a bad habit.

Upholders need to make a conscious decision to change. Questioners need information about the impact of their habit. Obligers need someone to hold them accountable. And Rebels need to make changes on their own terms.

To identify your tendency, take Rubin's Four Tendencies Quiz (this is free, but requires you to enter your email address).

3. Choose the Right Approach

To identify the right tactics for breaking or changing a habit, you need to know what works for you as an individual.

You can pin down your personal preferences by using another concept from Rubin's book – the "strategy of distinctions." This reveals how different people like to approach tasks. You might, for instance:

• Prefer novelty or familiarity.
• Be a moderator ("I can just cut back on something"), or an abstainer ("I need to cut it out completely").
• Prefer simplicity or abundance.
• Be an opener ("I like starting projects but struggle to complete them") or a finisher ("I like to get things done").
• Be an early bird or a night owl.

If you like novelty, for example, and you want to change your diet, you'll likely be more successful if you regularly add some new dishes to your menu. But, if you prefer familiarity, sticking to a weekly meal plan will be a better approach.

Your preferences might vary according to the habit that you're trying to break, so finding your style may involve some trial and error.

4. Make a Plan

Studies suggest that conscious planning can make it easier to overcome bad habits.

A good way to do this is to build habit-breaking into a program of Personal Goal Setting . This ensures that you review your progress regularly, and that you prioritize your most damaging habits.

When you have a plan, you can also add prompts and milestones into a To-Do List or Action Program .

5. Monitor Your Actions and Emotions

Research shows that monitoring your own behavior is essential for breaking bad habits.

Journaling is a great way to do this. If you're quitting smoking, for example, make a note of every successful day without a cigarette. Watching your progress in this way can be highly motivating . But log the times when you didn't succeed, too, and your thoughts and feelings throughout the process. This can reveal the behaviors or situations that trigger your habit.

When you've identified those negative behaviors, you can begin to swap them for more positive ones (see Use Obstacles and Replacements, below). But be realistic, and don't expect instant results: it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become a new habit. If you experience a few setbacks along the way, making a note of them allows you to learn from your mistakes .

Breaking bad habits means making changes, and this can cause strong emotions to bubble up – even when it's change for the better. Our article, Coping With Change , explores common reactions to change, and ways to deal with them.

6. Use Obstacles and Replacements

In his 2010 book, " The Happiness Advantage ," positive psychologist Shawn Achor argues that you can break bad habits by putting obstacles in place that stop you from automatically carrying out the behavior. For example, if you find yourself repeatedly checking Twitter, you could block your access with an app.

You can also make an effort to avoid the people, places and situations that trigger your bad habit. Say, for instance, that you want to stop gossiping at work . You know that you gossip most during lunch with particular colleagues, so you resolve to eat at a different time, with different people.

You can also look for positive behaviors that replace the negative ones. For this to work, the replacement must address the underlying "benefit" or "payoff" that you get from your habit.

For example, if you want to stop criticizing people, flip the same behavior around and try praising them instead. Or, if your goal is to stop checking your email during meetings, offer to chair the meeting or take detailed minutes, to keep yourself occupied.

7. Find a Role Model

Look for someone who has broken a habit like yours, and has reaped the rewards. This shows you that it's possible and worthwhile to break your own.

Choose someone you like and admire. If it's someone you know, ask them how they did it. You could even ask them to coach or mentor you while your work through your habit. Alternatively, it could be a celebrity or business leader. If so, check whether they've written a memoir, or seek out interviews online.

8. Reward Yourself

As you start to beat your habit, give yourself a little treat once in a while so that you feel good about the progress you're making.

Rewards are most effective when they come soon after the positive behavior. Choose something that you truly want and will enjoy. Over time, your brain can start to associate your new, positive behavior with the reward, and this will reinforce your new "good" habit.

Take care not to reward "good" behavior with "bad" behavior. For example, don't use junk food as a reward for taking exercise. To avoid this trap, prepare a list of positive rewards in advance.

9. Involve Others

Finally, consider asking co-workers, family members or friends to help you to stay on track.

Share your goals with them, and ask them to tell you if they notice you slipping back into your old ways. This will provide further accountability and boost your motivation.

If you're not ready to involve those close to you, join a support group or an online forum. Communicating with people who have similar goals, and who can offer encouragement, will keep you motivated if things get tough.

Habits are behaviors or thought patterns that you repeat so often, they become automatic. Some habits are useful and positive, but others can hold you back or become destructive and unhealthy.

A combination of the following strategies can enable you to break a bad habit:

• Identify the causes of your habit.
• Increase your self-awareness.
• Choose the right approach.
• Make a plan.
• Monitor your actions and emotions.
• Use obstacles and replacements.
• Find a role model.
• Reward yourself.
• Involve others.

Breaking Bad Habits Infographic

See how you can break bad habits with our infographic .

Holland, R.W., Henk, A, and Langendam, D. (2006). 'Breaking and Creating Habits on the Working Floor,' Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 42(6). Available here .

Lally, P. et al. (2009). 'How Habits Are Formed,' European Journal of Social Psychology , 40(6), 998-1009. Available here .

Quinn, J.M., Pascoe, A., and Wood, W. (2010). 'Can't Control Yourself? Monitor Those Bad Habits,' Social Psychology Bulletin , April 2010. Available here .

Rubin, G. (2015). ' Better Than Before ,' New York: Broadway Books.

Rubin, G. (2018). The Four Tendencies Quiz [online]. Available here . [Accessed December 7, 2018.]

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Process of Quitting a Bad Habit Essay

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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Breaking Bad Habits

Why It’s So Hard to Change

If you know something’s bad for you, why can’t you just stop? About 70% of smokers say they would like to quit. Drug and alcohol abusers struggle to give up addictions that hurt their bodies and tear apart families and friendships. And many of us have unhealthy excess weight that we could lose if only we would eat right and exercise more. So why don’t we do it?

NIH-funded scientists have been searching for answers. They’ve studied what happens in our brains as habits form. They’ve found clues to why bad habits, once established, are so difficult to kick. And they’re developing strategies to help us make the changes we’d like to make.

“Habits play an important role in our health,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Understanding the biology of how we develop routines that may be harmful to us, and how to break those routines and embrace new ones, could help us change our lifestyles and adopt healthier behaviors.”

Habits can arise through repetition. They are a normal part of life, and are often helpful. “We wake up every morning, shower, comb our hair or brush our teeth without being aware of it,” Volkow says. We can drive along familiar routes on mental auto-pilot without really thinking about the directions. “When behaviors become automatic, it gives us an advantage, because the brain does not have to use conscious thought to perform the activity,” Volkow says. This frees up our brains to focus on different things.

Habits can also develop when good or enjoyable events trigger the brain’s “reward” centers. This can set up potentially harmful routines, such as overeating, smoking, drug or alcohol abuse, gambling and even compulsive use of computers and social media.

“The general machinery by which we build both kinds of habits are the same, whether it’s a habit for overeating or a habit for getting to work without really thinking about the details,” says Dr. Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Both types of habits are based on the same types of brain mechanisms.

“But there’s one important difference,” Poldrack says. And this difference makes the pleasure-based habits so much harder to break. Enjoyable behaviors can prompt your brain to release a chemical called dopamine A brain chemical that regulates movement, emotion, motivation and pleasure. . “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again,” Poldrack says. “This explains why some people crave drugs, even if the drug no longer makes them feel particularly good once they take it.”

In a sense, then, parts of our brains are working against us when we try to overcome bad habits. “These routines can become hardwired in our brains,” Volkow says. And the brain’s reward centers keep us craving the things we’re trying so hard to resist.

The good news is, humans are not simply creatures of habit. We have many more brain regions to help us do what’s best for our health.

“Humans are much better than any other animal at changing and orienting our behavior toward long-term goals, or long-term benefits,” says Dr. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University. His studies on decision-making and willpower have led him to conclude that “self-control is like a muscle. Once you’ve exerted some self-control, like a muscle it gets tired.”

After successfully resisting a temptation, Baumeister’s research shows, willpower can be temporarily drained, which can make it harder to stand firm the next time around. In recent years, though, he’s found evidence that regularly practicing different types of self-control—such as sitting up straight or keeping a food diary—can strengthen your resolve.

“We’ve found that you can improve your self-control by doing exercises over time,” Baumeister says. “Any regular act of self-control will gradually exercise your ‘muscle’ and make you stronger.”

Volkow notes that there’s no single effective way to break bad habits. “It’s not one size fits all,” she says.

One approach is to focus on becoming more aware of your unhealthy habits. Then develop strategies to counteract them. For example, habits can be linked in our minds to certain places and activities. You could develop a plan, say, to avoid walking down the hall where there’s a candy machine. Resolve to avoid going places where you’ve usually smoked. Stay away from friends and situations linked to problem drinking or drug use.

Another helpful technique is to visualize yourself in a tempting situation. “Mentally practice the good behavior over the bad,” Poldrack says. “If you’ll be at a party and want to eat vegetables instead of fattening foods, then mentally visualize yourself doing that. It’s not guaranteed to work, but it certainly can help.”

One way to kick bad habits is to actively replace unhealthy routines with new, healthy ones. Some people find they can replace a bad habit, even drug addiction, with another behavior, like exercising. “It doesn’t work for everyone,” Volkow says. “But certain groups of patients who have a history of serious addictions can engage in certain behaviors that are ritualistic and in a way compulsive—such as marathon running—and it helps them stay away from drugs. These alternative behaviors can counteract the urges to repeat a behavior to take a drug.”

Another thing that makes habits especially hard to break is that replacing a first-learned habit with a new one doesn’t erase the original behavior. Rather, both remain in your brain. But you can take steps to strengthen the new one and suppress the original one. In ongoing research, Poldrack and his colleagues are using brain imaging to study the differences between first-learned and later-learned behaviors. “We’d like to find a way to train people to improve their ability to maintain these behavioral changes,” Poldrack says.

Some NIH-funded research is exploring whether certain medications can help to disrupt hard-wired automatic behaviors in the brain and make it easier to form new memories and behaviors. Other scientific teams are searching for genes that might allow some people to easily form and others to readily suppress habits.

Bad habits may be hard to change, but it can be done. Enlist the help of friends, co-workers and family for some extra support.

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Editor: Harrison Wein, Ph.D. Managing Editor: Tianna Hicklin, Ph.D. Illustrator: Alan Defibaugh

Attention Editors: Reprint our articles and illustrations in your own publication. Our material is not copyrighted. Please acknowledge NIH News in Health as the source and send us a copy.

For more consumer health news and information, visit health.nih.gov .

For wellness toolkits, visit www.nih.gov/wellnesstoolkits .

• Essay Writing

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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