Habits shape our lives. If you have good habits, things will go better for you than if you have bad ones. The difference between the two is simple: good habits move your life forward; bad habits hold it back. For instance, good habits like regular exercise and a healthy diet will improve your health, while bad habits like sedentary behavior and only eating what tastes good will undermine your health.
Naturally, you’ll want to increase your good habits and decrease your bad habits, but it’s not easy. Three ways to change your habits are the substitute method, the cue-reward-routine method, and the notebook method.
The Substitute Method
The reason why both good and bad habits persist is that each offers a payoff. While a good habit will make you feel good; so, too, will a bad habit, at least temporarily.
One simple strategy, then, is to substitute a better habit for a bad one so that you don’t regret the loss of pleasure from your bad habits.
A few examples might make this clear:
- You can turn smoking cigarettes into vaping. By getting a vape juice subscription box it will be more convenient to vape than smoke a cigarette, not to mention more interesting given the variety of options.
- You can practice inhaling and exhaling to a count of ten when you feel like yelling at the slow motorist puttering along ahead of you. By turning your attention away from how inept they appear to be toward your own breathing pattern, you’ll defuse your mounting anger.
- You can take control of overspending with credit cards by paying with cash. By leaving your credit card at home, for instance, when you go out for the evening with your friends and stuffing bills into your wallet, you will limit how much you can spend when you’re out on the town.
The Cue-Routine-Reward Method
Author Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, details exactly about how to use the cue-reward- routine method.
Essentially, he says, there are 3 aspects to every habit:
The first aspect is the cue. Imagine that you’re an accountant. At a certain point in your day at work, you feel bored and frustrated by the work you’re doing on your spreadsheet.
The second aspect is the routine. After you feel bored and frustrated with your accounting tasks, you go on Facebook and interact with your friends. Your feeling of agitation now disappears and you begin to experience some pleasure. Perhaps, you’re amused by some posts and make some witty comments. Over time, then, you develop a routine: when work gets frustrating, surf Facebook.
The third aspect is the reward of changing your feelings, going from being upset to feeling happier.
This cue-routine-reward behavior can be turned to your advantage to create a positive habit.
Let’s suppose, you want to break the habit of watching television as soon as you get home from work every evening. You would like to change this habit to a good one: go on a jog instead of watching sitcoms until you get into a better mood.
You could set your t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers in the living room as your cue. When you come home, you put these on instead of turning on the television. Your routine is now to head back out, walk to the nearby park, and run around it three times before walking back home. Your reward is the endorphin high you’ll get from the fresh air and exercise.
The Notebook Method
The notebook method forces you to become fully aware of your bad habit.
Let’s suppose that you work from home and tend to raid the refrigerator for a snack whenever the work becomes tedious. As a result of this habit, you’re not as productive as you should be and you’re beginning to pack on a few extra pounds.
Using the notebook habit, you would write down when you get up for a snack and what you eat. Initially, the urge to snack will be stronger than the urge to refrain, but by writing down your snack habit every time you do it, you’ll begin to feel self-conscious about how many breaks you take instead of working and quit doing it.
In conclusion, think of habits as making deposits or withdrawals from a bank account. When you act on a good habit, then you deposit money into your account. If you’re consistent, you’ll begin to prosper. Conversely, when you act on a bad habit, then you withdraw money from your account. If you’re consistent, you’ll begin to go broke.