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A simple way to break a bad habit. 19,793,006 views |. Judson Brewer |. TEDMED 2015. • November 2015. Read transcript. Watch next. Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them?
- Overview
- Identify your triggers
- Focus on why you want to change
- Enlist a friend’s support
- Practice mindfulness
- Replace the habit with a different one
- Leave yourself reminders
- Prepare for slipups
- Let go of the all-or-nothing mindset
- Start small
Everyone has habits, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. Some are pretty useful — maybe you lay out your clothes for work the night before or automatically turn off the lights when you leave a room.
But other habits, such as biting your nails, drinking caffeine too late in the day, or hitting snooze too many times, might not be so beneficial.
Breaking unwanted habits can be difficult, especially if you’ve been engaging in them for a long time. But understanding how habits form in the first place can ease the process.
•Reminder. This is a trigger, or cue, that could be a conscious behavior, such as flushing the toilet, or a feeling, such as nervousness.
•Routine. This is the behavior associated with the trigger. Flushing the toilet cues you to wash your hands, while feeling nervous triggers biting your nails. Doing something over and over can make the behavior routine.
•Reward. The reward associated with a behavior also helps make a habit stick. If you do something that causes enjoyment or relieves distress, the pleasurable release of dopamine in your brain can make you want to do it again.
Remember, triggers are the first step in developing a habit. Identifying the triggers behind your habitual behaviors is the first step in moving past them.
Spend a few days tracking your habit to see whether it follows any patterns.
Note things like:
•Where does the habitual behavior happen?
•What time of day?
•How do you feel when it happens?
Why do you want to break or change a certain habit? Research from 2012 suggests it may be easier to change your behavior when the change you want to make is valuable or beneficial to you.
Take a few minutes to consider why you want to break the habit and any benefits you see resulting from the change. Listing these reasons may help you think of a few that hadn’t occurred to you yet.
For added motivation, write your reasons down on a piece of paper and keep it on your fridge, bathroom mirror, or another place where you’ll see it regularly.
Seeing the list can keep the change you’re trying to make fresh in your mind. If you do happen to fall back into the habit, your list reminds you why you want to keep trying.
If you and a friend or partner both want to break an unwanted habit, try to do it together.
Say you both want to stop smoking. Dealing with cravings on your own can be tough. Quitting along with a friend won’t make the cravings go away. But they might be easier to deal with when facing them with someone else.
Make it a point to cheer each other’s successes and encourage each other through setbacks.
A friend can still offer support even if they don’t have any habits they want to change. Consider telling a trusted friend about the habit you’re trying to break. They can encourage you in times of doubt and gently remind you of your goal if they notice you slipping back into old habits.
Mindfulness can help you develop awareness around your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This practice involves simply observing impulses that relate to your habit without judging them or reacting to them.
As you become more aware of these routine behaviors and the triggers that lead to them, you may find it easier to consider other options, such as avoiding reminder cues or not acting on the urges.
You might have an easier time breaking a habit if you replace the unwanted behavior with a new behavior, instead of simply trying to stop the unwanted behavior.
Say you want to stop reaching for candy when you’re hungry at work. If you simply try to avoid the candy dish, you might fall back into the habit when you can’t resist hunger. But bringing in a Tupperware of dried fruit and nuts to keep at your desk gives you another snack option.
As you repeat the new behavior, the impulse to follow the new routine develops. Eventually, after you see rewards from the new habit — more energy and less of a sugar crash — the urge to keep doing this behavior might outweigh the desire to pursue the old habit.
Replacing harmful habits, such as substance misuse, with more positive ones can have a lot of benefit. But it’s important to remember “good” habits, such as exercise, can still become excessive. Even “healthy” eating can have negative effects when taken to extremes.
Using stickers, sticky notes, or other visual reminders wherever the habit behavior happens can help you rethink the action when something triggers you.
Here are a few ideas:
•Want to break the habit of drinking soda with every meal? Try leaving small stickers on your refrigerator that you’ll see when you go to reach for a can.
•Trying to remember to turn off lights when you leave a room? Leave a note for yourself on the light switch or door.
•Want to start keeping your keys in a designated place so you stop losing them frequently? Leave a dish for your keys in the first place you’ll see it when you return home.
You can also use a smartphone for reminders. Set your alarm and add a motivating note to yourself, such as “Time to turn off the TV! :)” or “After-dinner walk — remember how good it feels!”
Breaking a habit can be challenging, though you might find some habits easier to shake than others.
“It’s very easy to slip back into old patterns, particularly when the new ones aren’t solidified yet,” said Erika Myers, LPC. “Change is hard. Remember, it took a while to build up those habits, so you won’t lose them in a day.”
Try to mentally prepare for slipups so you won’t feel guilty or discouraged if you do. Maybe you commit to jotting down three bullet points about how you felt as you were doing the habit, or do a quick breathing exercise.
Try to learn from your slipups. Be honest with yourself about what led to the setback, and consider whether changing your approach might help you stay more on track.
Accepting you’ll probably slip up a few times when trying to break a habit and coming up with a plan is one thing. Preventing feelings of frustration and failure when you do slip up is another story.
If you fall back into an old habit, you might wonder, “Can I really do this?” You might begin to doubt yourself and feel inclined to give up.
Myers recommends looking at your successes instead. Maybe you’re trying to quit smoking and you succeed for 3 days in a row. On the fourth day, you have a cigarette and spend the rest of the night feeling like a failure.
“Having a cigarette after going a few days without smoking doesn’t take away those past days,” said Myers. Remember, you can make a different choice tomorrow.
Trying to kick multiple habits in the same go? The image of a new, improved self can be a powerful motivator, especially when you first decide to change unwanted habits.
This can sometimes work. If the habits go together, you might find it easier to address them at the same time. For example, if you want to stop smoking and drinking, and you always do those two things together, quitting both at once may make the most sense.
But experts generally recommend starting small. Aim to change one habit at a time. Addressing habits in steps can also help, even if these steps seem too small or easily manageable in the beginning.
Thinking back to the soda-with-every-meal example, you could start by not drinking soda with dinner for a week. Then, bump it up to not having it with dinner or lunch the next week.
May 8, 2017 · Once we can be compassionate in our thinking, we can figure out the next best step to take toward the change we want. 5. See it, and believe it. Elisha Goldstein reminds us that mindfulness helps build the resilience to resist giving in to urges that foster unhealthy habits. Visualize the circumstances that typically trigger an urge.
Feb 19, 2016 · Posted on February 19, 2016. Image credit: ted.com. Follow me on twitter @ RobbioDobbio. This is a lesson plan for C1+ students on the topic of bad habits based around a TED talk by Judson Brewer and an article from Yahoo Health. You can find the TED talk, students’ handout, reading text and teacher’s notes below:
