Maybe you bite your nails or pull on your hair. Or, you drink more than you want or too often check your phone. We all have habits that may seem to take over our lives, and despite attempts to brake or stop them, it is too easy to fall back.
Habits begin as behavioral solutions to an underlying emotional trigger, often anxiety or stress. Because they work – you get an immediate moment of relaxation when you check your phone or pour a drink – they repeat themselves and with repetition, behavior becomes hot in your brain. Finally, it becomes automatic.
But habits can be broken; You can reclaim your brain. Although you cannot cut old brain circuits, you can create new ones. Here are six tips to help you get a certain revolutionary traction:
1. Know your triggers.
You sit down to watch a movie and, a few minutes, you bite your nails; Beer calls your name as soon as you cross the front door and see the refrigerator. Ditto the phone on your bedside table.
What puts a habit in motion are triggers, which can be numerous and subtle. Knowing what triggers your behavior is the first step to break a neurological circuit; Recognition of the trigger makes less a trigger. With recognition, you have the opportunity to do something different.
2. Plan substitution behavior in advance.
Doing differently is the key. Breaking a bad habit does not concern the stop at white joints but a planned replacement: sit on your hands during the film; Make an Alcoas cocktail when you go home; Press a rubber ball instead of shooting your hair; Put your phone in your coat’s pocket rather than leaving it at sight.
But don’t expect to find a replacement on the spot. Once the film is at the start, you hit the front door, you see your phone, it’s over – your brain continues the automatic driver. Know what you will do on the film, the cocktail or the phone at 4 p.m. If you wait, triggers will be too crushing.
3. Follow your emotional temperature.
Environmental triggers are half the equation; The other is emotional. Because bad habits are effective in reducing anxiety. We tend to rely on them when we feel emotionally vulnerable – dressed in exams or job exams, having trouble at work or after a great argument with our partner or our boss.
The antidote follows your emotional temperature. You wake up and ask how you are going and what you feel. How emotionally vulnerable are you? Do you need to be careful today? If you worry about exams or your relationships, it’s a good day to be careful about your destructive behavior.
And it’s time to be proactive. I suggest that my clients register approximately every hour to take their emotional temperature on a 10 -point scale, 1 being flat, ok and 10 being out of control. You have to catch up at 3 or 4 so that you can face what makes you anxious or take measures to reduce your anxiety. If you wait until you are 6 years old or more, it is too difficult to slow down feelings.
4. Solve underlying problems.
Because bad habits begin as bad solutions to underlying problems, it is logical to find a better solution to your main problem. Maybe you have an anxiety disorder that keeps you constantly afraid of social situations or makes you self-criticism or stimulates your use of alcohol or drugs. Or, your work is always stressful– You feel constantly criticized – or your relationship collapses but nobody talks about it.
It’s time to act, to find better ways to fight against your anxiety, your work, your relationship. Will it automatically break your habit? No, but the habit will fade over time when you reduce triggers and the source.
5. Expect a shift.
Two steps forward, one step back. This is how it happens. Expect. By a bad day, the refrigerator or the phone attracts you; you are vulnerable; It’s good; It’s time to come back to the horse.
6. Have a sidelines.
This is responsibility and support, someone to register and turn to you when you have trouble. The key is clearly with the help of the help you need to avoid feeling micrograted and resentment.
Breaking Bad Habits is not on personality Or will But reclassify your brain by replacing behavior focused on habits with new healthier options.
It’s about making your brain work rather than your brain that runs you.
๐ #MR_HEKA ๐
