Are Bad Habits Ruining Your Life? Learn How to Break Them and Achieve Your Goals

Get more out of life by eliminating your bad habits!

Whether we are willing to admit it or not most of us have a few (or many) bad habits that we wish we were able to change. So what is it that keeps us returning to these same habits time and again, even when we know that they may not be in our best interest?

Keep reading to learn why we cling to behaviors that don’t serve us, and how we can get rid of these bad habits to make our lives better.

What are Habits?

Habits are an automatic response to our environment that we have formed by repeating the same behaviors and actions over and over again. They can form easily when we are bored or under stress and are not consciously thinking about what we are doing. Some habits serve out goals and dreams for a better life, and others we consider bad!

Change your habits by changing your mind.When we are repeating tasks that we already know how to do our mind goes into autopilot mode and this is when we act out our repeated behaviors without any conscious thought. Some habits are good and help us to achieve our goals, like being conscientious, exercising regularly, eating healthy foods, meditating, and eliminating mental, emotional, and physical clutter from our lives. Others are not so good, and actually prevent or severely limit our ability to achieve our goals.

Where Did You Learn Your Bad Habits?

From the time we are born, until we reach the age of seven, our minds are like a sponge and absorb information from the environment we are brought up in. This includes the behaviors we are exposed to from the people who have influence over us, the TV programs that we are put in front of, the kindergartens we go to, schools, and social groups that we belong to.

At this young age, we are not yet able to make decisions about which information to take on board because we don’t have the ability to think critically for ourselves. Therefore, we adopt all the information that comes our way. Our minds are so eager to learn, so hungry for information, and they do not yet know how to make a distinction between which behaviors and habits will help us get the things we want later in our lives and the ones that will sabotage our dreams for a healthy, wealthy, happy and wise life.

The ‘good and bad’ information and habits are indistinguishable for our young minds and so are absorbed equally! Therefore, it is in our formative years that we learn the habits that we will subconsciously return to for the rest of our lives…… unless we change them!

Why Do You Repeat Behaviors That You Know Don’t Benefit You?

I don’t know anyone who wants to change their good habits, so it is only our bad habits that we are concerned about here. If you, like the majority of us, currently support bad habits that you know are not in your best interests, you must already understand that these habits are not supporting your goals and dreams for a better life.

We each may have one or more bad habits that we wish to eradicate from our lives. These vary from the extreme, including drug and alcohol addictions, smoking, and other forms of self-harm to more moderate examples which can include negative self-talk, always being late, chewing fingernails, procrastination, emotional shopping, and wasting time on social media.

Why do we return to them again and again? It is our subconscious programming (the mind on autopilot) that is responsible for most of our thoughts and actions every day of our lives. Research indicates that up to ninety-five percent of the time we are not actually consciously thinking, but are in fact reacting and thinking based on the learned behaviors that we acquired from the time we were born until we were seven years of age.

So, ask yourself, were the people responsible for programming you ‘enlighten mystical beings’ or were they ‘regular humans’ with their fair share of hang-ups, problems, issues, and bad habits?

So what did you learn from them? How to be self-critical, judgmental, and pessimistic, or how to thrive, continue to learn and grow, strive to reach your full potential, and basically have an all-around optimistic attitude?

Are Bad Habits Ruining Your Life?

What did you learn when you were growing up?

It is quite evident when looking at the state of the world that the vast majority of people harbor habits that do not support them to live a life of peace, harmony, and abundance. Instead, many people live with poverty, fear, anger, violence, and self-doubt to name just a few of the problems that we face on a daily basis.

Rewrite History Reviews-childhood-quizBut, it does not have to be this way! It is our beliefs that lead to our thoughts and habits that have created the lives we are currently living.

  • If you are always late, you will never achieve a higher position at the office.
  • If you are fearful of what others think about you, you will never speak up to share your unique ideas.
  • Lazy? You will never strive to be better than you are now.
  • If you spend all your free time on social media, you will be reduced to the mentality of the ‘herd.’
  • If you eat fast food all the time, you will never be a great sportsperson.

The list goes on and on, and with reflection, it should be easy to identify some of the habits that each of us has that may be preventing us from achieving our goals.

Once identified, the choice is ‘what do we do about it?’

How Can You Break Your Bad Habits?

First, you must clearly identify the habit you wish to break, and then you can withdraw all support you have for the habit.

For example, if you wish to stop drinking so much alcohol, there are actions you can take to help you. These may include driving a different route home after work so you do not go past the pub where you normally drink, and to stop hanging out with ‘friends’ that encourage you to ‘go for a quick drink’ and then keep offering ‘just one more for the road.’

A nail-biting habit can be easily changed by adding a foul-tasting (non-toxic) substance to the nails you regularly chew on, so biting them will quickly become a very unpleasant experience.

Our mind is supposed to be our servant! Yet most of us are controlled by our programmed thoughts and habits.Wealth creation is easy once you have reprogrammed your subconscious We are in effect a slave to our conditioning. Remember, we did not voluntarily choose our early life programs for ourselves but were instead programmed by our families, the TV, news programs, the schools, etc. while our impressionable brains were still absorbing ALL available information.

Whatever is going on in our lives is a direct result of our mental programming which leads to our thoughts and actions which create our life’s circumstances. If you want to change something about your life’s circumstances, you must first change your mind! This will, with time, lead to a change in your thinking and acting habits.

How Long Does It Take To Change A Habit?

Unfortunately, that’s an impossible question to answer! We are all unique individuals with our own set of habits that affect us to varying degrees in our daily lives. Having a set number of days in mind to break a bad habit can be detrimental because if we don’t achieve it, we are setting ourselves up for more self-punishment and more negative self-talk.

Habits, by definition, should be difficult to break, as it is learned behavior, ingrained, through repetition into our being. The good ones support us and make our life easier and more pleasant. However, the bad ones, ohhhh, the bad ones…. we can do without them!

Our minds are incredible and are ours to use to create extra-ordinary lives!How badly do you wish to change some of your bad habits? Think about it, seriously! Your answer will determine if you are ready to change from negative behaviors to ones that will support your dreams in life.

The time taken is not important, as the whole of our lives is a journey of self-discovery. On this journey, if we consciously develop an attitude of ‘becoming more self-aware,’ we will personally develop and evolve ourselves each and every day by becoming more mindful of ourselves and our environment. It’s easier than you may think to change bad habits. All it requires is your conscious awareness or for you to become more mindful of your thoughts and actions!

Change Your Habits and You Will Change Your Life!

Changing habits is impossible until we have reached a firm resolve to do so. Positive modifications to our thoughts and behaviors can only occur once we have changed our minds to stop supporting our negative behaviors, as all power to change comes, first and foremost, from our minds. Our minds, (thoughts and attitudes) can be explored with meditation and mindfulness techniques as well as numerous other methods.

This journey of self-discovery is so worth it as by changing our habits, we will change our lives.

Any change, by definition, is something different from what we had or did before. Why not change with the attitude of making significant improvements in our lives?

If you are going to change, instead of just eliminating bad habits, why not replace them with better habits that support your long-term dreams for a fantastic life for yourself and your loved ones?

Up-level your life by learning a new skill!Change does take time, but it is worth it if we are willing to invest time and effort into our personal growth and development to create the future life we desire. Do you have unfulfilled dreams and desires that you would like to see come ‘alive?’ Everything is possible for us. We have magnificent minds, but sadly most of us are not utilizing our potential! Are you one of them?

What are you waiting for? Have you identified a bad habit that is limiting your potential yet? Are you ready and willing to do something about it?

Click HERE to go to reviews on some of the awesome products that I have used, and continue to use that have helped me change my life by first changing my thoughts and attitudes. New supportive habits are formed over time, and they continue to strengthen the unshakeable foundation for the amazing life that I am currently living!

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. I would love to hear about your experiences with breaking habits.

12 thoughts on “Are Bad Habits Ruining Your Life? Learn How to Break Them and Achieve Your Goals

  1. This is a very well-written article. As in-depth as it is, I can tell that it’s still only scratching the surface. I am a recovering addict, so I know first hand how powerful a habit can be. However, any habit can be broken if we stop going on autopilot and reacting, and instead start thinking about things for ourselves and then take positive action.

    1. Hi Tom. thanks for your input. Yes, I agree that my article is scratching the surface and is beneficial for most people. However, those with severe addiction issues may require help from others and monitoring to ensure that they achieve their desired results. I wish you all the best, my friend.
      Andrew

  2. Well written. A good article every parent should read as well. This hit home. My boys are 4 & 5 and we not only monitor their tv time but also limit it as well. Video games, music, etc, what you take in, they will as well. We can filter it, but our kids not so easily decipher.
    Very informative. No matter what the age. A habit is a habit. Let’s make them good ones.

    1. Hi Joe. Great! TV and video games are very destructive for young impressionable minds. The more you can regulate what content your kind are consuming, the better they will be because of it. A really good alternative to screen time is time spent in nature. the natural world is awesomely amazing and yet some many of the younger generations do not relate to the beauty that we are constantly surrounded by.
      I wish you all the best,
      Andrew

  3. Amazing article I really enjoyed reading it. I think all people in the world have some bad habits and we should at least try to reduce the number of our bad habits. I really enjoyed your advice on how we should change our bad habits to better ones and thanks for reminding me that if I will be lazy and stick with my bad habits they will ruin my dreams. I will do my best and try to get into a habit of spending at least one hour a day to be a better person and go towards my dreams. I also read somewhere that if you stick to something for 30 days it will become a habit and after that, it will be a lot easier to stick with it. What do you think, is it true?

    1. Hi Marius. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my article. One hour a day is a good start, but what happened to all of the other hours that you are conscious? It’s also a good idea to use them to create habits that will help you achieve your dreams. I have seen evidence that it actually takes 66 days for new habits to become cemented into our reality. The explanation given is because this is how long it takes the new neuron pathways in our brains that contain the new information we are encoding to become encased in a protective myelin sheath. This is positive because once this has happened the new habit becomes our new way of responding to our environment. So keep up the new ways of thinking and way of behaving for a couple of months and then they will begin to transform your life to that which you desire for yourself.
      I wish you all the best,
      Andrew

  4. Thank you, Andrew, for showing this incredible amount of information related to the mindsets. I didn’t know that I was practically pre-programmed by my parents to think in a certain way, to be self-judgemental and take in diverse bad habits from them. I will certainly take into account the advice presented in the article! I really want to change my thinking patterns! The Universe starts from the mind and the possibilities are endless as thoughts can become flesh.

    1. I am happy to hear that I have given you some things to think about. We are all the products of our past to varying degrees and unfortunately, most people do not realize it. You are one step ahead by understanding that your life starts from your own mind. From here, you can program your future to be the way you want it to be. A great book to read to help you change your thoughts is As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. All of us benefit from reading life-changing information like this famous book contains. I wish you all the best,
      Andrew

  5. Changing a habit is very difficult, but it is possible and with a daily reminder of that habit before it usually occurs is monumental to help break that apart. Just as you said to drive a different route home to avoid the pub, maybe even block your drinking friends numbers when they usually call you on the weekends to avoid the process of giving in or the odd talk about not wanting to drink and explaining why. During those times you’ll have triggers for those habits and learning how to cope with those triggers is also key to breaking a habit. Good read and enjoyed it very much, thank you.

    1. Thanks for your input, Jason. You are right when you say that learning to cope with the triggers is the key to breaking a bad habit. We all have stuff that we wish to change about ourselves, and we can all be successful in changing our habits. First, the desire to change must be strong, and then the follow-through must be consistent, and this is where avoiding the triggers is so important. Cheers mate. I wish you all the best,
      Andrew

  6. Wow! You’ve really put a lot of research into this. It gives me so much to think about. I’ve been trying so hard to move up in the company where I work and it just doesn’t happen. I apply myself 100% and more most of the time. I work all the overtime they need from me and do the extra tasks without being asked to. I figured out “my bad habits”, which are probably what’s holding me back.
    #1 I don’t have enough self-confidence
    #2 I’m nervous when I talk to people I don’t know because most of the time, they intimidate me.
    #3 I’m always in a hurry; I walk too fast, eat too fast, drive too fast, and try to talk too fast (makes me fumble over my words a lot)
    These are my really bad habits. If I build up my self-confidence I probably wouldn’t be intimidated by people I don’t know very well. If I would learn to slow down, I would probably be a better mechanic and gain more knowledge from people trying to teach me.
    Thanks for sharing this! I will be sure to try to work on these so that I can accomplish my goals sooner.
    Devara

    1. Hey Devara. Many thanks for sharing your struggles with us. Your story is not uncommon as many people suffer from low self-esteem. I imagine that you are not able to breathe in a relaxed manner when you are in situations that you find uncomfortable? I believe the best option to help yourself is for you to pause, and take a relaxed breath before you deal with anyone that you find intimidating. This will help engage your heart energy and take you away from your anxious mind energy. Deep in your heart, you will find strength because your heart knows that you are worthy and you are loved and that you will be supported in all that you wish to achieve. Try it! It may take a little time to remember to do it, but I am sure it will help you. I would love to hear how you get on.
      I wish you all the best! With love and respect to you on your journey through this life,
      Andrew

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