Breaking a Bad Habit

Dr. Purushothaman
January 12, 2014

 

Breaking a bad habit can be very difficult, and it is for most people. So how can we learn to break bad habits? Fortunately millions of people before us have succeeded in breaking their bad habits, and we can learn how they broke their bad habits.

Breaking a bad habit is not an easy thing to do for several reasons. One reasons is that we likely to have been doing it for a while so it is almost ingrained in us. Another reason is we have a deep emotional attachment to this behavior, like smoking, and getting rid of it would be like getting rid of a piece of us.
Imagine a bad habit as one neural connection in your brain. Each time you repeat that bad habit another neural connection forms, so in a little while you have a neural highway so to speak, so it becomes easy and almost automatic to do this behavior.
Fortunately there are ways to break that bad habit, but it won't be easy. Some people resort to hypnosis to break a bad habit like smoking or overeating. But let's try some other ways to break a bad habit before that.
One way to break a bad habit is to try and change your state of mind each time you feel like performing that bad habit. For instance if your bad habit is overeating at night, each time you feel the urge to eat, try to take your mind off the food. Go outside and run around the block, sing a loud song, do whatever it takes to change your state.
It might seem a little extreme but trying to change your mind's state when you feel the urge to do a bad habit can help. Remember each time you stop performing a bad habit that neural pathway gets smaller and smaller until it is no more.

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