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3 Scientifically Proven Ways to (Permanently) Break a Bad Habit.
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“The secret to permanently breaking any bad habit is to love something greater than the habit.”
Bryant McGill
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The Role Of Perseverance On Change
Bad habits don’t go away overnight. But, you can use strategies to give you that extra boost of self-confidence and self-control required to change.
Understand that sometimes you will fail an...
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Creating An “If-Then” Plan
It gives you an automatic response to react to your cravings and makes it easier to replace a bad habit with a good one:
- Identify the scenario that usually triggers y...
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Practice Being Aware Of Your Triggers
Mindfulness practice helps to weaken the link between the craving and the bad behaviour:
- Next time you’re hit with an urge to do the bad habit, take a step back and be aw...
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Use “I Don’t” Instead Of “I Can’t”
Research has found that using the phrase “I can’t” results in decreased self-control when compared to using the words “I don’t”.
When trying to break bad habits say “I don’t [bad habit...
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The Mechanics Of Habit Formation
Our habits are driven by a 3-part loop in sequence: trigger (the stimulus that starts the habit), routine (the doing of the habit and behaviour itself) and reward (the b...
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Set Better Goals
Be specific on how you’ll implement goals into your daily life. Examining how you’ve responded to the situation in the past and determining what you can do to avoid reverting to the old habit, might be all it takes to break the habit.
It’s 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.
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. This is where the importance of having an intrinsic motivation comes into play.
If that is the case, find as many benefits to the change as you can and try to use them as extra motivation.
Replace a Bad Habit With a Good One
The more you suppress your thoughts, the more likely you are to think about that thought or even revert back to that bad habit. Instead of trying to stop doing something, it’s easier to do something else.
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Starting vs breaking a habit
The process of stopping bad habits is fundamentally different from forming new ones.
- Creating a habit requires encoding a new set of automatic behaviors: the brain learns causal relationships between triggers that prompt action and the associated outcome.
- The popular belief is that the key to breaking a bad habit is replacing it with another habit. But this doesn't always work.
Progressive extremism
The process of “progressive extremism” utilizes what we know about the psychology of identity to help stop behaviors we don’t want. It works particularly well in situations in which substituting one habit for another just won’t do.
Identity helps us make otherwise difficult choices by offloading willpower. Our choices become what we do because of who we are.
"Don’t" vs "Can’t"
By classifying specific behaviors as things you will never do again, you put certain actions into the realm of “I don’t” versus “I can’t.”
Saying “I don’t” rather than “I can’t” provides greater “psychological empowerment.”
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Not backed up by science
While popular, researchers say there is a serious lack of evidence to back up mindfulness apps, even though they are increasingly perceived as proven treatments for mental health.
Seeking scientific validation
A handful of studies have been published on the efficacy of mindfulness apps, thanks in part to Headspace, one of the most popular apps in the field. In hopes of getting its app scientifically validated, the organization has partnered on more than 60 studies with 35 academic institutions. In the meantime, in lieu of research proving that apps work, marketers tend to draw misleading, but attractive claims.
The paradox of mindfulness apps
Mindfulness disrupts unhelpful habits. If you get distracted easily or have addictions, mindfulness helps curb these habits. But, in contrast, apps become popular and profitable by getting users lightly addicted to repetitive use. So, can an app really treat addiction, or is it inherently part of the problem? As of now, we don’t know the answer to that question.