Away With You, Bad Habits!

[I'm writing this essay here because i wanted to work on this essay but my teammates insisted on the smart house essay] =.="

There are only two types of habits in this world - good habits or bad habits. All habits are classified this way, there is no such thing as mild bad habits or below average habits. However, amongst these two habits, bad habits are the ones largely seen in people nowadays. Biting fingernails, losing temper, drinking excessively and smoking are some of the examples of bad habits in people these days, especially teenagers. Is it hard to break a bad habit? Not quite. Breaking a bad habit is a battle between sheer will power and mental strength. To start off, keep a journal on the things that you do in high repetition to find out what are the few habits you have. After successfully identifying the bad habits, it is time to get rid of them. Tackling the bad habits requires pure determination; using a few methods which includes removing cues of old behavior, averting your habits and substituting your bad habits.

For starters, removing the cues of the old behavior is pretty much effective. In another way, you actually stop doing or being with the cause of the habits intentionally. For example, if you tend to drink excessively when you hang out with your friends, stop hanging out with them; remove them to let you get rid of that bad habit. This method also works on objects. For example, give away your deck of cards or mah-jong if these are the cause of your addiction to gambling. Do what it takes to change yourself; change your daily routine if necessary. It is essential for you to stay focus and not give in to the bad habits during this process. If it is too difficult for you to adjust, seek help from a psychiatrist to get infomation on what other cues you can get rid of that won't create too big of an impact in your life.

Besides that, you can avert you habits. In a way, you punish yourself whenever you repeat your bad habits over and over again. Associate your bad habits with something unpleasant and distasteful. That way, you will be able to force it out of your system because most habits when done is numerous repetition turn to an unconscious state where you will start doing those habits without even thinking; some sort of a reflex action. For example, when you bite you fingernails for the first few times, you are aware and conscious of doing so. After few weeks or months, it tends to turn to an unconcious state. You will automatically bite you fingernails from time to time. In this case, you can apply this method by slaping yourself hard whenever you bite your fingernails. This may inflict pain towards you. However, after a number of times you slap yourself, you'll find that you had already slapped it out of your system. Therefore, you can deal with your bad habits by force.

Some people may not like hurting themselves. Instead, you can try substituting your bad habits with some healthy habits. This is also a good method, for not only does it not hurt you, you also gain some healthy habits in the process. For example, if you lose your temper often, practice deep breathing to calm yourself down or go out for a walk to catch the refreshing breeze. Through this example, we can see that not only does it prevent you from repeating your bad habit (losing temper), it also provide you a healthy activity (breathing thoroughly and walking). This method can also be used on addictive teenagers over computer games. You can actually replace computer games with healthy board games with your family. Not only your health would be taken care of, you also will gain a closer relationship with your family through board games. Replacing a bad habit is easier than stopping one. Using this method, you'll be able to kill two birds with one stone; lose bad habits and gain some good ones.

Not all bad habits are hard to tackle, it all draws back to whether you want to or not. "The bad habits won't go away, if you down play the game". Practice removing the cues of old behavior, averting the bad habits and replacing the bad habits to kick start your journey to living a healthier lifestyle.