How Changing Bad Habits Can Positively Change Your Life

Everyone has bad habits. Some people smoke, some binge eat and some might even engage in self-destructive behavior. These habits are often deeply ingrained into one's personality, to the point of becoming the traits by which many define themselves. If you want to change the course of your life you have to learn how to change these bad habits. Although it is an often long and difficult process the results will allow you to succeed where you may have otherwise failed. The steps below can help you learn how to identify, confront and eventually eliminate the habits that might control your life.

Changing Your Habits

Your bad habits are often part of who you are. You might make excuses for them, embrace them or even get a bit prickly when others bring them up. In reality though, these are not just habits -- they are a failing. They might be holding you back from achieving success in business, your social life or even love. Embracing your bad habits means simply learning how to live with what is going wrong, but eliminating them means that you are willing to make a positive change in your own life. There is nothing that says that this is easy, of course, but you should be willing to try it. After all, getting rid of your bad habits is one of the few ways that you can control your own life.

What Does It Mean To Get Rid of Bad Habits?

Getting rid of bad habits is more than just eliminating a negative behavior. To truly break yourself of a bad habit you have to learn how to make an effective change in your life. If you fail to do so you might replace your current bad habit with one that is just as bad. Or worse, you might even find yourself slipping back into old habits without giving yourself a chance to change. Instead, you must consider breaking yourself of bad habits to be a journey that will allow you to understand not only what you are doing wrong, but also to understand why you have made the choices that you have made. While this is not always a pleasant experience it can help you to change your life for the better.

How To Make A Change

The process of changing bad habits is one of small steps. The first, and perhaps most important, step is to figure out why you do what you do. Take the time to log your bad habits, noting both the time and what preceded the action. If your bad habit is late-night snacking, try to get an idea of the situation in which it occurs. Do you snack because you are hungry, or because you are stressed? If you know why you undertake the behavior you are more likely to be able to change it.

After you figure out the "why" you can move on to making a change. Sometimes, the mere knowledge of the behavior will be enough to break the habit. For others, it will take greater discipline. Try giving yourself a small reward when you go a day without performing the habit. Or try to take time to replace the bad habit with something positive. If you like to smoke in the morning, for example, you might be better served by going for a run. Changing the behavior is a key to controlling your life.

What Happens After The Change?

The real question when making any kind of life change is whether the effort is worth it. For most, eliminating a bad habit can have one of many possible side effects. You might eliminate a habit that costs you money, or you might eliminate something that allows you a better chance to excel at work. You might become more attractive to the opposite sex in some cases and you might learn to have a better opinion of yourself in others. No matter the specific change, though, you will be engaging in a process that will allow you to have greater control of your own life. You may think that you are only eliminating a problem habit, but the reality of the situation is that you are taking the first steps on a path to greater personal success.
 

5 Common Mistakes in Setting Personal Goals

 
Setting personal development goals is important since it creates a clear 

direction of where your life should be heading. Goals encourage you to grow and 

become the person that you want to be. They help you achieve things that you 

probably think impossible for you to achieve. If you don't have your own set of 

goals, you might spend the rest of your life fulfilling the goals of the people 

around you.
 
However, you need to be very careful when setting goals for yourself. If you 

don't do it right, it is more likely that you will only be wasting your time and efforts. If you want to create significant changes in your life, you have to 

avoid the common goal setting mistakes listed below.
 
 1. Not putting your goals in writing. Just like any other things, writing your 

goals down allows you to remember them easily. It will also help you keep your 

focus on what you really want instead of the random things that come to your mind

every single day. It gives certain clarity on what you have to achieve, allowing you to come up with better strategies for success.
 
 2. Not creating a system for remembering your goals. Although, writing down 

goals is a good start, you need to have a system for remembering them. You need 

to be constantly reminded of the things that you have to do. One way of doing 

this is by writing your goals on a piece of paper. Then, put that paper where you

can always see it such as on your bathroom door, work/study table or computer 

monitor.
 
 3. Not setting specific or clear goals. The rule in effective goal setting is 

that your goal must be quantifiable or measurable. For example, you want to lose weight. How will you know when you have already reached your goal of losing 

weight? After you've lost 5 or 10 pounds? It would be difficult to track your 

progress if you are aiming for unspecific goals.
 
What you should do is include hard numbers to your goals. By doing so, you are 

creating a finish line for yourself which allows you to say when you have finally

succeeded.
 
 4. Not setting realistic goals. So, you now have a set of specific goals. 

Fantastic! The next thing to do is make sure that they are realistic or 

attainable. Nothing can kill your motivation faster than unrealistic goals. If 

you want to lose 5 pounds in a week, that would be a great goal, measurable and 

realistic. But if you say, you want to lose 5 pounds in a day, that's called day dreaming. Unrealistic goals are overwhelming and often results to procrastination.
 
 5. Not having a plan. Achieving your goals doesn't end in just having a goal. 

Of course, you have to make them happen. You have to create a plan on how to be 

where you want to be. You may need to do a bit of research before creating a 

plan. You may search the Internet or ask your friends who have actually been to 

where you want to be for some advice.
 
Create a clear, specific and practical plan to achieve your goals. However, be 

careful of over-planning. Otherwise, you might not get started at all. You also 

have to remember that when it comes to planning, you have to be very flexible. 

Make room for the things that might happen unexpectedly.
 
When things don't go as planned, you need to be able to adjust your actions 

based on what is actually happening around you. Analyze the situation and create another plan of action.