Bad Habits into Good

Most of us humans have at least a few bad habits. I certainly have a few. In last week’s blog, I listed 30 fairly common bad habits, but now I want to list a few proven ways to change or drop those bad ones.

1. It is wise to first take some time, maybe a week or two, thinking about your habits, which ones you want to change and why, before you begin trying to drop or alter the bad ones.
2. Try to figure out what triggers a particular bad habit.
3. See yourself as a coach and direct yourself like you think, or know, a coach would.
4. Make small changes at first.
5. Identify good reasons you want to stop that bad habit.
6. Identify the cause of the bad habit, like stress or boredom.
7. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
8. Think about what good habits you can use to replace the bad habit.
9. Focus on how much good changing that bad habit will do for your life.
10. Get a friend or relative to help coach you.
11. Try not to hang out with people that have the same bad habit. Seek out new or other friends that don’t have the same bad habit.
12. Form a new routine that keeps you away from the triggers that moves you into the bad habit.
13. Develop substitute routines, plans, and actions.
14. Reward yourself each time you resist the bad habit.
15. Visualize and see yourself succeeding.

A very dear and very smart friend of mine said this about habits:

“Habits are driven by a 3 part loop. 1. TRIGGER–the stimulus that starts the habit. 2. ROUTINE–the doing of the habit and behavior itself. 3. REWARD–the benefits associated with the behavior.

By the way, one of my rather good habits was aggressively pursuing very successful people and picking their brain about how they made their millions. One of the best, who turned out to be a very good friend, was this guy who I just quoted. His name was Zig Ziglar. He was a super successful guy in many, many ways. He motivated me and many thousands or others big time. Sadly, he is no longer with us but his legend and what he taught me, and so many others, lives on forever.