First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you.
27th October ,2007
We are what our habits are. Some habits and good and the others are bad. Read this article to understand how to discover and improve your bad habits and tips on breaking bad habits
Habit is an acquired pattern of behavior that often occurs automatically. Some habits are good and some bad. It is often the bad ones that we should be aware of and try to resolve.
The inherent problem is that bad habits are part of our system and hence people are not even aware that they have a particular bad habit (unless it’s a social bad habit like smoking or drinking).
Over the years your parents, spouse and people who care for you will always point your bad habits so that you improve. But what if you wanted to discover your bad habits yourself? This article will give you practical tips on how to discover and improve your bad habit.
So, how do you discover these bad habits within your system? How to you understand what is bad for you?
Following are the tips to discover bad habits
1. Ask your friends to help you
This is an easiest way to determine a list of your bad habits. Circulate a sheet of paper to your friends and ask them to anonymously write the bad habits or something that they think you should change. Also ask them why you should change or an instance when you did something wrong.
Review their notes and compile them into one list. This is an important step as it gives you one master list to work on. Be careful as you may want to first identify whether or not it genuinely is a problem or bad habit. You may also want to identify if some of the points provided was a one-off case. Strike off those habits that you feel is irrelevant.
At this stage you should have a good number of habits to work on and improve.
2. Make notes of an ideal person that you want to be
You need to give a lot of thought on this one. It could take days or weeks to come up with a definition of an ideal person that you desire to be. The easiest way is to relate yourself with some of the most successful people that you know of. Do a bit of research on them. Identify their strengths and habits. Ideally preparing a list of good habits from 2 – 3 good people would help you derive a list of 10 – 15 good habits that you should inculcate. These people could be your parents, relatives, friends, etc.
Set time for yourself and work on this list. Once you have finalized on a list of good habits that you want to develop; compare it with the list of habits that you already have and strike them out.
The remaining items on the list should serve as a guide to check if you do the opposite of what is mentioned in that remaining list. E.g. if the list contains a habit “Good Time Manager”, check with yourself it you waste time.
4 Steps on how to improve your bad habits
1. Prioritize your list
With a ready to refer list in hand based on the tips mentioned above, you should prioritize the habits that you should improve first. E.g. if your list contains bad habits like, wasting time and bad eating habits; then improving on your time management skills should be taken up first and then improving bad eating habits. Though there are some bad habits that you could improve in parallels, but it is advisable that you improve one step at a time.
