How To Kick A Bad Habit

It’s easy to organize habits into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – exercise good, junk food bad. Unfortunately, the world is not so black and white. Our habits exist on a continuum based on our ability to modify them. Some habits, like how many emojis you use in a text, are easy to modify. Others, such as what time you go to bed, are more challenging. However, many of us face habits far more serious and difficult to break that texting or sleeping schedules. How much you drink at a party, whether or not you smoke, how long you wait to leave the poker table: these habits are tougher to break, and can take a stronger hold over our lives. Habits such as these become almost hardwired in the mind, the repitition of behaviors forming a pathway in the brain. Going down that path becomes progressively easier, and getting out of it becomes progressively harder. Even after you change the habit, it can take weeks, months, or even years to establish a better one.

Many have tried to offer guidance, inspirational quotes, and self-help media in the name of breaking bad habits. A wide variety of research has explored the subject, helping expand our understanding of why some habits are so hard to break. Optimizing our behavior has been a subject of extensive research. Habits- repeated behavioral patterns- become carved into our brain. Our minds fall into the grooves, and it’s easy to lose perspective on what we are doing. While running your life on autopilot might make things go more smoothly, unhealthy habits can destroy your and your loved ones lives along the way. Take your life into your hands. Make the change, and keep changing your behavior until you build a new behavior. Seek resources to get you started on this process, and to keep you going. Your loved ones deserve it. You deserve it.

RecoverUs Centers can help you break your habits. Staff members like Nursing Supervisor Seth Doiron work every day with people looking to build new, healthier habits. You can email RecoverUs at start@recoveruscenters.com or call at 618-519-9444.