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How to Break a Bad Habit

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How to Break a Bad Habit
Julia R Scott
AIU Online

Abstract

People deal with habits every day. It may be biting nails, smoking, sexual addictions, alcohol, drugs, and even popping or cracking one’s knuckles. In this essay three successful tips will be addressed on how to break bad habits in an everyday life.

How to Break a Bad Habit In everyday life, people deal with all kinds of habits. Habits usually start off as a single thought, and then become a multitude of thoughts which creates habits. Habits can make up our character, and this character can dictate our life. It is up to a person to stop the initial negative thought from becoming a variety of negative thoughts, if not these thoughts may bring harm or destroy the person as a whole. In this essay, three tips, going cold turkey, replacing the habit, and avoidance will be discussed in order to show how these useful tools can help in guiding through to make a choice to break bad habits.
Going Cold Turkey With some bad habits, being abstinent is a goal- trying to have no further relationship whatsoever with the habit. Using this as a way to break away is for people who have habits that will cause physical harm to one’s health and well-being. Usually in 12 step programs such as alcohol anonymous will use abstinence in order to change habits with ones who uses and abuses chemical substances. When a person goes cold turkey, one has to walk away from it or just completely turn their back on it. One may say that this is a quicker and cleaner way to break a habit, but it can also be a challenging way to break a habit as well. The risk of quitting a habit this way may be too much on the body, which is a disadvantage, for it may be too overwhelming for the body, thoughts and emotions to just completely stop and not do the things done before seeking help to break the habit. Some people find this procedure very effective, but with the effective rehabilitation, there will still be challenges that have to be faced in order to make sure that the habit can be broken.
Replacing the Habit If completely going cold turkey is not an option, replacing what one does may be a better option. Sometimes a person has to shift interest in what they are doing and give energy to a new way of living. When using a replacement strategy, one is basically substituting the habit with a healthier action. If a person smokes, he might chew gum, or eat hard candy. A drinker may drink sweet juices and sodas to avoid alcohol. Even a person who overeats may begin to watch what they eat and begin to buy fresh vegetables and fruits to lose the weight. This form of rehabilitation helps a person to respond to cues and cravings, and also relieves anxiety and gives a sense of control. But, because one is exchanging from one habit to another, there could be a risk of exchanging one bad habit to another. Always make sure to know what needs to be exchanged for the negative in order to put the positive there to change the habit.
Avoiding
When avoiding a habit, one is removing the temptations of the old habit from one’s environment or the person is removing themselves from the temptation. Dealing with change can be very hard, but in order to get rid of the habit, one must move on with their life as much as one can to have a healthy life. A person may have to distance themselves from the old, or throw out the problem that they are dealing with. Instead of going to a bar, find other recreations, like donating to a shelter or goodwill, or start a new exercise routine, something that will pull one away from doing the obvious. Avoid places that will allow the habit to come back into one’s life. The more one gets into a routine of being away from the habit the better chances one has of breaking it completely from one’s life.
Conclusion
Dealing with any habit can be challenging, but with the right guidance and support, anyone can break the issues that one faces in everyday life. There are so many other alternatives that a person can use to identify with how to break a habit. A person should always first realize there is a problem and also figure out what is the best way for them to figure out how to break it. Council and mentors are also available to assist with these issues. Always make the best decision on how to handle breaking a habit and always seek additional help if it cannot be done on your own. The more support there to help, the faster one will become in breaking their habit.

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