essay bad habits

Essays About Bad Habits: 5 Essays Examples and Writing Prompts

Writing about bad habits poses an interesting topic; to help with your essays about bad habits, read our top essay examples and writing prompts below.

Many people tend to discount their bad habits as small. They get blinded to their life-shattering and long-term effects because they don’t think of it as a “big deal,” they get blinded to their life-shattering and long-term effects. 

Whether smoking or procrastination, these habits are detrimental to our quality of life. Many people don’t realize how detrimental these habits can be until they create more significant problems in their lives.

Writing about bad habits and how to kick them will create an engaging, compelling, and thought-provoking essay. Read on to see the best examples of essays about bad habits and 8 intriguing writing prompts.

1. Weekly Reflections – The Ordeal of Breaking Bad Habits by Steven Lawson

2. how to break a bad habit and replace it with a good one by james clear, 3. how bad habits form (and why they’re so difficult to break) by ian kan, 4. break your bad habits by amy novotney, 5. 5 bad business habits you need to stop immediately by dylan ogline, 8 prompts on writing essays about bad habits, 1. causes of bad habits, 2. how bad habits take a toll on the health, 3. getting past the challenge of changing bad habits, 4. how to know if a habit is bad or good, 5. does stress drive us to form bad habits, 6. are bad habits contagious learn how to avoid adopting them, 7. american habits that are considered weird or bad habits in other cultures, 8. understanding the time it takes to break a bad habit.

“Our external realities are always tied to and flow out of our interior/spiritual core. Change occurs first at one’s core and then manifests itself on the surface, not the other way around.”  

Lawson uses a spiritual approach to understand bad habits, including how they’re formed and how to get rid of them. He delved into his difficulties with transforming his bad habits and wrote about how he perceived his bad habits as a behavioral reaction to a problem.

“You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom, which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits.”

Clear’s take on bad habits is that they are methods of dealing with stress and boredom. After explaining the formation of habits from stress and boredom, he provides methods and tips for replacing them with good habits. Clear also included examples that his readers can easily relate to.

“Of course, you might feel guilty, but the goal is to be aware of those bad habits and how often they happen. Then from there, you can hatch a plan to break those habits.”

Ian Kan’s essay on bad habits dives into the psychology behind habit formation, including the various stages. After this in-depth look, he offers various methods of transforming bad habits into good ones.

“Self-motivation is best sustained by having a clear, long-range goal that can be broken down into a series of specific, attainable smaller goals to guide one’s efforts along the way.”

Novotney’s essay focuses on the top ten habits that grad students have that prevent them from gaining further academic success. She emphasizes how these habits keep students from making it through graduate school. On top of listing a good number of commonly practiced bad habits among students, she also included solutions for fixing and correcting them.

“But with each habit I shed, my prospects got brighter. When I shed all five, my agency was on track to becoming the seven-figure business it is today.”

Ogline takes bits and pieces from his experience as a business owner to write his essay on bad habits. He also provides business smarts and wisdom for readers of his essay, whether they’re simply interested in the essay or fellow entrepreneurs.

Consider the essay ideas and topics we’ve listed below if you’re more interested in writing your essays about bad habits.

Understand why bad habits exist or how they form by reading and writing about them. Use this essay writing opportunity to talk about how certain actions, situations, or emotions may lead to the formation of some bad habits.

Like stress, bad habits can worsen a person’s health. This essay focuses on the harm bad habits may cause to a person’s physical or mental health. You can even include how bad habits caused by stress can stress a person even more.

This idea will drive you to consider how difficult it is to get out of a habit cycle. When you choose to write about this topic, ensure you research the different methods of effectively dropping bad habits for different kinds of people. It gives immense help if you’ve already experienced how hard it is to break a bad habit. 

Figure out how to write a narrative essay to better share your story.

Sometimes, a habit lies in the gray area. It can be good in certain situations and bad at other times. Thus, it’s helpful to figure out how detrimental or beneficial a habit is. Consider including a habit’s effects in the short and long term.

Bad habits can form from many things, including stress. This essay prompt encourages you to read about how stress can create bad habits in a person. For example, drinking alcohol can become a way for someone to cope with stress from work or family pressure. Then, consider other forms of bad habits and how stress might have a hand in encouraging their formation.

Like diseases, bad habits can spread from person to person. In extreme cases, bad habits can even affect entire nations. Think about the bad habits you’ve gotten from being around or observing other people. You can also apply this essay to fictional works wherein the characters start adopting each other’s bad habits. It provides a good study on how bad habits can

What you may see as a bad habit can be good in a different culture. A famous example is slurping noodles loudly in East Asian countries. Loud slurping is unpleasant and rude in the West, but it’s a sign of appreciation for the food in East Asia. Research other habits that create cultural divides and discuss the different ways people view them, whether negatively or positively.

Let’s say you’re ready to break a bad habit. The challenge is to endure until you’ve gotten rid of it or changed it into a good one. This essay idea is a perfect topic for people who have tried breaking several bad habits and want to write about the experience. Use this essay topic to explore why some bad habits took longer to stop and how difficult it has been to break them.  

Get more writing ideas from our informative essay topics list for students.   

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How to Break Up with Your Bad Habits

Why is breaking a habit so difficult? Because habits are made up of three components: a trigger (for example, feeling stressed), a behavior (browsing the Internet), and a reward (feeling sated). Each time we reinforce the reward, we become more likely to repeat the behavior. This is why old habits are so hard to break — it takes more than self-control to change them. But after 20 years of studying the behavioral neuroscience of how habits form, and the best way to tackle them, researchers have found a surprisingly natural solution: using mindfulness training to make people more aware of the “reward” reinforcing their behavior. Doing so helps people tap into what is driving their habit in the first place. Once this happens, they are more easily able to change their association with the “reward” from a positive one to a more accurate (and often negative) one.

Breaking habits is hard. We all know this, whether we’ve failed our latest diet (again), or felt the pull to refresh our Instagram feed instead of making progress on a work project that is past due. This is largely because we are constantly barraged by stimuli engineered to make us crave and consume , stimuli that hijack the reward-based learning system  in our brains designed initially for survival.

• JB Jud Brewer MD PhD is an addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in anxiety and habit change. He is an associate professor at Brown University’s School of Public Health and Medical School and the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits .  Dr. Brewer has posted 20+ short videos on how to develop resilience and work with Coronavirus-related mental health issues on his YouTube Channel .    

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How to break a bad habit

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Make it easier by taking a hard look at motive, modification, and mindset

We all have habits we’d like to get rid of, and every night we give ourselves the same pep talk: I’ll go to bed earlier. I will resist that cookie. I will stop biting my nails. And then tomorrow comes, we cave, and feel worse than bad. We feel defeated and guilty because we know better and still can’t resist.

The cycle is understandable, because the brain doesn’t make changes easily. But breaking an unhealthy habit can be done. It takes intent, a little white-knuckling, and some effective behavior modification techniques. But even before that, it helps to understand what’s happening in our brains, with our motivations, and with our self-talk.

We feel rewarded for certain habits

Good or bad habits are routines, and routines, like showering or driving to work, are automatic and make our lives easier. “The brain doesn’t have to think too much,” says Stephanie Collier, director of education in the division of geriatric psychology at McLean Hospital, and instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Bad habits are slightly different, but when we try to break a bad one we create dissonance, and the brain doesn’t like that, says Luana Marques, associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. The limbic system in the brain activates the fight-flight-or-freeze responses, and our reaction is to avoid this “threat” and go back to the old behavior, even though we know it’s not good for us.

Often, habits that don’t benefit us still feel good, since the brain releases dopamine. It does this with anything that helps us as a species to survive, like eating or sex. Avoiding change qualifies as survival, and we get rewarded (albeit temporarily), so we keep reverting every time. “That’s why it’s so hard,” Collier says.

Finding the reason why you want to change

But before you try to change a habit, it’s fundamental to identify why you want to change. When the reason is more personal — you want to be around for your kids; you want to travel more — you have a stronger motivation and a reminder to refer back to during struggles.

After that, you want to figure out your internal and external triggers, and that takes some detective work. When the bad-habit urge hits, ask when, where, and with whom it happens, and how you are feeling, be it sad, lonely, depressed, nervous. It’s a mixing and matching process and different for every person, but if you notice a clue beforehand, you might be able to catch yourself, Collier says.

The next part — and sometimes the harder part — is modifying your behavior. If your weakness is a morning muffin on the way to work, the solution might be to change your route. But environments can’t always be altered, so you want to find a replacement, such as having almonds instead of candy or frozen yogurt in lieu of ice cream. “You don’t have to aim for perfect, but just a little bit healthier,” Collier says.

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5 Ways to Overcome a Bad Habit

These actionable steps can help you conquer harmful habits..

Posted February 23, 2021 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

Breaking your habits down into these fundamental categories can help you understand what a habit is, how it works, and how you can break it. This is known as the habit loop. Primarily, a cue is developed, which, when activated, triggers a craving.

The craving then motivates a response, which provides your brain with a reward, which satisfies the desire, and ultimately becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four things end up forming a neurological feedback loop that eventually allows you to develop automatic habits.

Fortunately, there are many ways that you can destroy your bad habits and keep them away for good. Which one works best will depend entirely on your individual circumstances and specific inclinations.

1. Quit Cold Turkey

You can eliminate bad habits by not indulging in them, not even for one day, starting now. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. It can be incredibly challenging to get rid of a bad habit because it is deeply ingrained in your brain.

When the bad habit’s trigger repeats, it can quickly reignite the old behavior. This is the greatest weakness in this particular method. Often, when an old pattern or behavior recurs, when you slip back into your old bad habit just once, you tend to make a huge fuss over it, and you feel like you wasted all of your time being abstinent.

You end up becoming crushed by self-disappointment that when you slip just once and return to your old habit, you completely slip back into your old ways. However, there is a power to such an approach. If you can quit cold turkey and persevere in your resolve, you can prove to yourself that you are entirely capable of making changes.

2. Change Your Habit Loop

Recent studies discovered that habits are stored in the brain in a different way than more standard memories. Typically, your emotion triggers a behavior that ends when the emotional urge has been satisfied when it comes to your habits.

There are twofold repercussions to these findings. First, if your habits are hardcoded in your mind, it means they are impossible to remove. This means that once those habits have been formed, they will stay with you for the rest of your life, which is why drug addicts and alcoholics relapse into their addictions, sometimes after decades of sobriety.

Second, there isn’t any such thing as getting rid of your old habits. Instead, you have to overwrite the bad habit with a new routine. The most efficient method for achieving this is by reprogramming the behavior. However, you have to make the new habit stronger than the old habit if you want it to stick.

Fortunately, by changing your habit loop, you can more easily solidify the new behavior, which will make it much more difficult for you to return to the old habit.

3. Use Small Steps

Using small steps to overcome a bad habit is a combination of quitting cold turkey and changing your habit loop, as discussed above. While you disagree with your bad habit, you also freely admit that you cannot quit your habit cold turkey.

This makes it necessary to analyze your behaviors and identify your triggers. When you can accomplish these two tasks, you can gradually limit your bad habit. For example, if you are trying to break the habit of eating poorly, you can start small by indulging in fewer sweets. With each passing week, you need to reach another milestone in eliminating your bad habit from your life.

After enough time has passed and you've continually worked toward making small changes in your habit, you will finally arrive at a point when you can completely stop engaging in your bad behavior automatically. Theoretically, with this method, you should be less prone to feeling discouraged when you slip. You have to assume some failure with this method but are better equipped to keep your motivation . This method is much more convenient for those who can quantify their bad habits.

4. Track Your Progress to Reinforce Your Determination

While this isn't necessarily a method for breaking a bad habit per se, it is beneficial in every instance of getting rid of a bad habit. In the above method of taking small steps toward getting rid of your bad habit, the approach is relatively apparent. If you are about to restrict yourself by having only a few cigarettes, you need to track the number.

When you change your habit loop, it is also a great idea to start tracking what isn’t working. At the bare minimum, tracking your progress comes down to checking whether or not you engaged in your bad habit that day. You can also use the tracking method when using the cold turkey method of eliminating bad habits.

When you quit your bad habit, you should be counting the days without the behavior or habit and try to build a streak that motivates you to keep going. When you find yourself clean for a single day, and you haven't been in years, it can be incredibly blissful. The second day that you add to the chain feels like an event worthy of a celebration.

Then comes the joy of going a week, later a month, then the first year. These kinds of milestones can provide you with a sense of accomplishment, even though you aren't really doing anything other than abstaining from engaging in a habit, which is the whole point of this particular method.

What's more, tracking your progress works in the same way as building your good habits. It focuses your attention on the essential things and provides you with the motivation to keep moving forward. It can also provide you with valuable data points that can help you to identify your pitfalls and critical points.

5. Focus on Your Good Habits

This method will ultimately kill your bad habits by starving them. Getting rid of bad habits focuses your attention on the negative aspects of your life. It can end up feeling incredibly restrictive rather than liberating. When you focus on eliminating bad habits, you watch yourself and end up denying yourself the pleasures you’re used to having in your life.

While you know that it is better to avoid engaging in your bad habits in the long run, those bad behaviors are a part of who you are, whether you like it or not. They were the mechanisms you used to relieve stress and help you cope with anxiety and low self-esteem . Without them, your life might seem to be less bearable.

So, instead of focusing on your bad behaviors and what you can’t do, you should focus on new activities that contribute to your life in a more positive way. To break your bad habits, funnel all of your energy into habits that will improve your experience rather than avoiding what is wrong with it. While your bad habits will continue to lurk in the depths of your brain, the only time they will resurface is if you lower your guard.

When it comes to eliminating bad habits from your life, it is essential to remember that you are about to embark on a long and challenging journey. You will continually be tempted to return to your old ways and risk succumbing to your old habits.

While these methods will help you break your bad habits, you must remember that the temptation to fall back into your old ways will always be there. Don’t continue to let your bad habits dictate your life. Take the first positive steps toward changing your bad habits today and start living a happier and healthier life now.

Sarah-Len Mutiwasekwa is a mental health advocate whose efforts are invested in breaking the stigma around talking about mental health and increasing awareness of these issues in Africa.

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Resilience — Significance of Negative Habits

Significance of Negative Habits

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Published: Mar 25, 2024

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Paragraph on Bad Habits

Students are often asked to write a paragraph on Bad Habits in their schools. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 200-word, and 250-word paragraphs on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

Paragraph on Bad Habits in 100 Words

Bad habits are things we do that are not good for us. Like eating too much candy, not brushing our teeth, or watching TV all day. These habits can make us feel sick or tired. It’s important to replace bad habits with good ones. Instead of eating candy, we can eat fruits. Instead of watching TV all day, we can play outside. This way, we can be healthy and happy. Remember, it’s okay to make mistakes, but we should always try to do better next time. So, let’s work on saying goodbye to bad habits and hello to good ones.

Paragraph on Bad Habits in 200 Words

Bad habits are things we do that are not good for us. They can be small things like biting your nails, or bigger things like not doing your homework. It’s important to know that everyone has bad habits, but we can work to change them. Imagine your bad habit is like a weed in a garden. If we don’t pull it out, it can grow bigger and bigger. But if we work hard, we can pull out the weed and make our garden clean and beautiful again. Just like the garden, we can make our life better by changing our bad habits. It can be hard to change, but remember, it’s okay to ask for help. Your friends, family, and teachers want to help you. So, if you have a bad habit, don’t feel bad. Just start working on it little by little every day. Soon, you will see that the bad habit is gone, and you will feel proud of yourself. Remember, everyone can change their bad habits if they try hard and don’t give up.

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Paragraph on Bad Habits in 250 Words

Bad habits are actions that we often do without thinking and can be harmful to our health or well-being. They can be as simple as biting nails, watching too much TV, or as serious as smoking or drinking alcohol. These habits can start at any age, and once they become a part of our daily routine, it’s hard to break free from them. They can affect our life in many ways. For instance, if we stay up late every night, we might feel tired and lack energy during the day, which can affect our studies or work. Similarly, eating too much junk food can lead to health problems like obesity and heart disease. To get rid of these habits, we need to be aware of them and make a conscious effort to change. This can be done by setting goals, replacing bad habits with good ones, and seeking help from family and friends. It might be hard at first, but with time and patience, we can overcome these habits and lead a healthier and happier life. Remember, it’s never too late to start making positive changes. So, let’s identify our bad habits, work on them, and strive for a better tomorrow.

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What are bad habits?

How bad habits form and persist, how to break bad habits.

• Tip 1: Explore your reasons for changing

Tip 2: Set the right goals

• Tip 3: Identify the triggers

Tip 4: Build your action plan

• Tip 5: Use mindfulness

Tip 6: Cope with habit changes

Tip 7: know when to seek help, how to break bad habits change negative behaviors to healthy ones.

Feel stuck in a cycle of negative or addictive behaviors? No matter how ingrained they feel, you can learn how to break bad habits and replace them with healthy, positive alternatives.

Bad habits are unhealthy behaviors we engage in so often that they’ve become automatic. While some automatic behaviors can be healthy, such as brushing your teeth before bed or buckling your seatbelt in the car, bad habits tend to have negative effects on your well-being—such as eating junk food, drinking too much , smoking, skipping exercise, or staying up late to binge-watch TV or scroll through social media . All of these negative behaviors can affect your mental as well as physical health, increasing stress , anxiety, and depressive feelings.

Bad habits can also take on the form of social behaviors. If you habitually make yourself the focus of every conversation, for example, it can annoy your friends or significant other and create divisions in your relationships. Or if you’re a people-pleaser who always says “yes” without thinking, others may take advantage of your kindness, impacting your welfare.

Other common bad habit examples include:

• Skipping meals or not staying hydrated.
• Pulling your hair or biting your nails when stressed or bored.
• Being bossy or giving unsolicited advice.
• Waiting until the last minute to study for an exam or prep for a meeting.
• Listening to music at a volume that’s harmful to your hearing .

Sometimes the consequences of your bad habits are obvious. You waste weekends nursing hangovers, for example. You face legal issues due to your habitual speeding. Or your bank account reflects your latest gambling or online shopping spree.

Despite the negative consequences, bad habits can be incredibly persistent and difficult to shake. You may have tried many times to drop an unwanted habit, only to find yourself sliding back into the same negative patterns of behavior. Repeatedly failing in your attempts to change can leave you feeling disheartened and hopeless.

But no matter how long you’ve had a bad habit, or how automatic a behavior it seems to be, it is possible to make a real and lasting change. The first step to changing a negative behavior is to understand how habits develop and why they stick around.

There can be several reasons how and why bad habits form. In some cases, negative behavior patterns may simply be the result of repetition. They allow you to operate on “auto-pilot,” so you don’t have to put much thought into what you need to do next. You have an argument with your partner, so you automatically reach for a bar of chocolate or a tub of ice cream.

Bad habits can also be the result of a habit loop. A habit loop has three components: a trigger, a behavior, and a reward.

• A trigger is an external cue to your brain to engage in a behavior. Triggers can come in many forms, such as sights, smells, thoughts, or emotions. For example, if a coworker yells at you, it can trigger you to feel stressed out. Or perhaps you’re bored and then notice someone staring at their phone.
• Next, comes the behavior . You reach for a cigarette when you’re stressed about the conflict with your coworker. Or you open your social media app when you see someone else on their phone.
• Finally comes the reward . Smoking seems to ease your work stress, or scrolling through social media alleviates the boredom. Your brain finds a benefit to continuing the behavior. The reward could be a negative reinforcer—making something unpleasant, such as stress, go away—or a positive reinforcer—adding something desirable or pleasurable to your life.

Each time you engage with a habit loop, your brain links all three of the components together. This way, certain behaviors become deeply ingrained, especially if you’ve repeated them for years. However, it’s still possible to break bad habits, curb addictions, and replace negative behaviors. The process will require both patience and persistence, but with these tips you can change your life for the better.

Rather than focusing on giving up an existing bad habit, it’s often easier to replace it with a healthier habit. After all, when you free yourself of one behavior, some other behavior needs fill the void. This also allows you to use habit loops to your advantage. Essentially, you want your actions to be motivated by healthier, more productive rewards.

Of course, bad habits can be stubborn, so it’s important to have realistic expectations as to how long it will take to replace them. One popular myth suggests that it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. More recent research indicates that 66 days is the average amount of time that it takes for a new behavior to feel “automatic.”

The actual timeline can vary widely based on the person and their goal. In general, the simpler the new behavior, the quicker it will turn into a habit. For instance, it might be easier to make a habit of buckling your seatbelt than it is to start and maintain a daily exercise routine .

Expect to spend two to three months, or perhaps even longer, trying to replace a bad habit with a healthier one. But know that it gets progressively easier the more you stick with your plan.

Replacing multiple habits at a time

If you have multiple bad habits that seem unrelated, you might want to narrow your focus to one habit at a time. You can give a habit your full attention and then move on to the next when you feel comfortable.

However, in some cases, bad habits may complement one another or contribute to a common problem in your life. For instance, your habit of staying up late can fuel your habit of drinking too much coffee throughout the day, or vice versa. Both habits can then contribute to anxiety . When negative behaviors overlap like this, it may be more effective to tackle them all at once.

Whether you’re trying to address one bad habit or multiple negative behaviors, you can adopt a similar approach to making a change. The first steps will involve clarifying your motivations and goals. Then, identifying your triggers and coming up with a plan to address them. Finally, knowing how to incorporate mindfulness and cope with lifestyle changes can help to reinforce healthy new habits.

Tip 1: Explore your reasons for changing a bad habit

We tend to label bad habits as “bad” because we recognize there’s some real consequence to our behavior. Your smoking habit could be severely damaging your health, or your habit of impulse shopping wrecking your budget. Procrastination might be standing in the way of your academic success, or overworking adversely impacting your marriage.

Exploring your own reasons for wanting to change can help you stay motivated, even in the face of setbacks.

Write down what you stand to gain by dropping a habit. Consider the small and large benefits. For instance, maybe you want to drop the habit of leaving your lights and television on all night. The benefits of turning off your electronics could be to improve your sleep , lower your electric bill, and reduce your carbon footprint.

Write down what you don’t want to change and why. It may be unnecessary or even counterproductive to drop certain parts of a bad habit. In the example above, you could decide that you want to leave a sound machine on at night because it helps you to sleep.

Regularly revisit your reasons. Keep your list handy. Put it on your phone or keep a physical copy on your fridge or nightstand. Any time you feel discouraged or disenchanted with your goals, look at the list. You might even decide to add or subtract reasons from the list as time goes on.

Coming up with the right goal is an important step in breaking a bad habit. If the goal is too general, too difficult, or too hard to measure, you risk sliding back into old patterns of behavior.

“Approach” rather than “avoid.” As mentioned before, you want to replace the bad habit with a healthier one. So, when forming a goal, focus on “approaching” a new behavior (“I want to start using a stress ball when I’m feeling tense”), instead of putting all the emphasis on avoidance (“I want to avoid chewing my nails when stressed”).

Get specific. When objectives are poorly defined, it’s easier for you to move the goalposts and give in to cravings. Some examples of vague goals include:

• “I want to stop sleeping in.”
• “I want to stop watching so much TV.”
• “I want to quit impulse buying at the supermarket.”

Instead, make your goals measurable and time-oriented:

• “I want to be out of bed by 8 a.m. each day.”
• “I want to replace one hour of evening television with one hour of physical activity.”
• “I want to start using a basket rather than a cart at the supermarket to limit my purchases.”

Make your goal realistic. For example, if your bad habit is being messy, don’t expect to drop it completely in several days. Instead, consider setting small goals for gradual improvement. In the case of mess and clutter, you could start with a goal of tidying up just one room or one closet of your home within the next week. As you begin to see the benefits of a neater space, you can move on to tidying the next area of your home.

Track progress. Keeping a tally of how often you engage in the new habit or avoid the bad habit can help you identify milestones. This could be as simple as putting a checkmark on your calendar for each day you exercise or get out of bed by 8 a.m.

Celebrate the small victories. Meeting incremental goals and acknowledging your successes can help motivate you to continue the path forward. Reward yourself with a self-care session (such as a hot bath in the evening after exercising) rather than indulging in new unhealthy habits (opening a tub of ice-cream as a reward).

Tip 3: Identify the triggers of a bad habit

Identifying habit cues can be tricky. Sometimes, they’re obvious—the stress of an argument triggers you to begin chewing your nails, or a push notification on your phone prompts you to begin scrolling. Other times, they’re more subtle—just looking at the clock at the end of the workday triggers you to head to your favorite bar for happy hour.

Getting to know your triggers can help you better understand what drives your habit and then establish a workable action plan. Jot down a list of possible triggers for your bad habit.

Remember, triggers can be:

• Emotional states , such as loneliness , boredom, or anxiety.
• Settings that you associate with the habit, such as a bar.
• People who engage in the habit or encourage your behavior.
• Time , such as a point in the day in which you typically indulge in the habit.
• Preceding actions that serve as a cue, such as picking up your phone whenever your screen shows a notification, or smoking after a meal.

If you’re having trouble identifying the cues or believe you’re missing something, try recording the time and location of your last craving. Consider who was around you, how you were feeling, and any events that took place beforehand. Repeat this exercise multiple times throughout the week, and then review your list for patterns.

It’s also possible that a single bad habit has multiple triggers. For instance, you might be more likely to impulse shop when you’re stressed out, browsing online before bed, or in a store with your best friend.

When it comes to breaking a bad habit, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The action plan that is most effective for you might be different from another person’s, even if the habit you’re trying to change is the same. Try out a few of the following strategies and determine which to incorporate into your daily life:

Create barriers to bad habits. To make overeating more difficult, don’t keep junk food in your home. To avoid sleeping in, set an alarm and leave it on the other side of the room. Delete the app that feeds your scrolling habit. Spend less time around people who pressure you to drink or smoke.

Remove any barriers to the new habit. Maybe you’ve decided that instead of scrolling on social media, you’ll go for a 10-minute walk each day . To make the action as easy as possible, leave a pair of walking shoes, a jacket, and an umbrella near your door. This helps ensure you’re ready to go outside no matter the weather.

Build a routine around the new habit. You might make a cup of coffee and sip it as you walk around the neighborhood. Or you could use that time to chat with a loved one on the phone. These types of actions can also further incentivize you to maintain the healthy habit.

Visualize yourself succeeding. Visualization techniques can be a powerful tool for some people. Use your imagination to strengthen your resolve and set your intention. Envision yourself cooking dinner once you get home instead of ordering out. Imagine yourself being a listener rather than dominating the conversation.

Have an accountability buddy. You might know other people who are also trying to curb a negative or addictive behavior. Chat with coworkers, friends, and family members who share similar goals, and then agree to hold each other accountable. For example, you may decide to go for daily walks with a coworker instead of heading to the bar after work. Even if the other person isn’t wrestling with a destructive habit, they might still offer you support and encouragement.

If you can’t find in-person support, online message boards and support groups can be useful resources.

Tip 5: Use mindfulness to a break bad habit

Habitual behavior involves an element of thoughtlessness. You find yourself reaching for junk food or your phone as if you’re on “autopilot.” Mindfulness, a nonjudgmental awareness of what you’re feeling in the moment, can help you recognize and cope with cravings.

[Read: Benefits of Mindfulness]

The next time you feel a craving arise, try the following method, known as RAIN, to ride out the urge until it passes. The purpose of this activity isn’t to banish the craving but rather to become more familiar with it and see it as a temporary state.

With consistent practice, you’ll have an easier time noticing your craving and enduring it until it passes.

• R ecognize when the craving is starting. Maybe you feel the desire for a sugary treat building, or perhaps you have the urge to make an online purchase.
• A cknowledge and accept that the craving is here. You don’t need to do anything to solve it. A craving can be uncomfortable, especially if you don’t act on it, but imagine it as a wave that will pass in time.
• I nvestigate the feeling. Get curious about your experience. What’s physically going on with your body? What sensations are present? Perhaps your muscles are tensing or your mouth is watering. What are your thoughts or emotions like in this moment?
• N ote the sensations. Label what you’re feeling. Restless thoughts. Fidgeting. Quick breathing. Put the feelings into words and note how they change throughout the wave. After a few minutes, you will likely notice that the craving naturally subsides.

Pay attention to how the bad habit feels

Even when you give into a craving and perform the habit, you can use mindfulness to your advantage. Take note of what indulging in the habit feels like. What does it feel like to bite your nails? How does your body feel after hours of scrolling through social media? What taste is left in your mouth after you finish a cigarette?

Being mindful of these sensations can lead you to realize that the bad habit doesn’t actually feel good at all. What you initially interpreted as a reward is now a consequence. You may even find yourself becoming disenchanted with the action altogether.

Just because you’ve established a healthier habit it doesn’t mean the work is done. In fact, it’s easy—and common—for old behaviors to return. Here are some tips for navigating the road ahead:

Continue to build on your newly formed habits. If you’ve started a routine of daily walking, consider progressing to regular jogs around the neighborhood. If you’ve started to let go of your people-pleasing habits at work, move on to setting firmer boundaries with friends and family. If you’ve replaced junk food with healthy eating habits, continue experimenting with new recipes. All of this will further reinforce good habits as a regular part of your life.

Update the people around you. If the old habit was something you indulged in with others, such as drinking after work, let them know that you’re trying to make a change. This can help cut back on intentional or unintentional peer pressure.

Let go of all-or-nothing thinking. On occasion, you might find yourself sliding back into bad habits. If you feel particularly stressed one week, you might look to your old comforts: eating junk food, smoking cigarettes, or chewing your fingernails. In those moments, it can be tempting to think, “This puts me back to square one. What’s the point?”

• Self-compassion is important here. When you’re feeling discouraged by a setback, try offering yourself the same level of reassurance and encouragement you would offer a friend or loved one.
• Remind yourself that setbacks will happen, but they don’t negate all your progress. You’ve developed tools, learned strategies, and built willpower that can help you get back on track and continue making progress.

[Listen: Being Kind to Yourself: A Meditation]

When a bad habit seems particularly stubborn or interferes with your daily functioning, consider that it might be part of a deeper underlying condition. Some examples of bad habits that you may need to seek professional help for include:

• Smoking or drinking to cope with social anxiety .
• Oversleeping due to feelings of depression .
• Binge eating due to an eating disorder.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can involve engaging in ritualistic actions that you might label as bad habits. You might constantly wash your hands to alleviate intrusive thoughts about germs. Or always seem to be running late because you spend too much time sweeping the floor or rearranging items on your desk.
• Other bad habits are actually addictions . When you try to drop them, you experience uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. For instance, your nightly drinking or recreational drug use is due to a substance abuse disorder.

A mental health professional can guide you through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and help you understand the thoughts and feelings that drive your actions. Even when a habit is fueled by an addiction or disorder, you can also still make lifestyle changes to improve your sense of well-being. Whatever is causing your negative behavior, there are ways to make the journey to breaking your bad habits easier and more productive.

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More Information

• The Habit Mapper - Visual tool to understand the three components of a habit. (Dr.Jud.com)
• Alimoradi, Z., Jafari, E., Potenza, M. N., Lin, C.-Y., Wu, C.-Y., & Pakpour, A. H. (2022). Binge-Watching and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 19 (15), 9707. Link
• Bailey, R. R. (2017). Goal Setting and Action Planning for Health Behavior Change. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine , 13 (6), 615–618. Link
• Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions—ScienceDirect . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Breaking Bad Habits | NIH News in Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Brewer, J. (2018).  The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. Yale University Press. Link
• Changing Habits – Learning Center . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Gardner, B., Lally, P., & Wardle, J. (2012). Making health habitual: The psychology of ‘habit-formation’ and general practice. The British Journal of General Practice , 62 (605), 664–666. Link
• How to break a bad habit—Harvard Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• Hyman, D. J., Pavlik, V. N., Taylor, W. C., Goodrick, G. K., & Moye, L. (2007). Simultaneous vs sequential counseling for multiple behavior change. Archives of Internal Medicine , 167 (11), 1152–1158. Link
• Karim, F., Oyewande, A. A., Abdalla, L. F., Chaudhry Ehsanullah, R., & Khan, S. (n.d.). Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Cureus , 12 (6), e8627. Link
• Trade bad habits for good ones—Harvard Health . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link
• What Is the Habit Loop? —Dr. Jud . (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2024, from Link

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Process of Quitting a Bad Habit Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The only way of quitting a bad habit that seems to be most effective one is to replace it with a good habit. Human nature cannot tolerate a hole or vacuum in life, if anybody wants to eliminate a bad habit from his or her personality, it is required to fill that gap with something influential and positive. Otherwise, that vacuum might follow a path of least resistance and get filled with the same bad habit again.

Undoubtedly, process of quitting or replacing bad habit is very difficult and emotional. It requires motivation and determination as well as an aim with a defined time limitation. In this paper, we will discuss the important steps that may help achieve the targeted goal.

People who realize that they need to bring change in their lives by quitting their particular bad habit can easily achieve their target as compared to those who fear facing problems during the process of quitting bad habit. They are more likely to deny the fact that quitting bad habit can alter their lifestyle in a better manner. As a beginner, it is vital to take a start by defining particular attitude aims (Brizer, 2011). It can be done by altering daily activities and gradual changing the behavioural characteristics.

Do not try to do it alone, as it is a crucial attempt. It needs motivation from such a partner who is also willing to quit the same bad habit. For example, if two persons try to quit smoking together then it becomes easier to get success. Otherwise, it has been noted that when a person sees another person with the same bad habit he or she loses motivation and turns back to the same old habit (Brizer, 2011). But, if one individual with the same goal keeps on motivating another partner during the critical process of kicking bad habit it surely brings a positive change.

Quitting or developing any habit is not that easy as it might seem to be. It needs time along with determination. A person needs to maintain a diary or calendar in which sub-goals should be mentioned with timeline. It means this process also needs proper planning before implementation. For example, if a person drinks 15 cups of tea daily, he or she needs to cut down the number of cups slowly and accordingly i.e. cutting down two tea cups per week. Also, hourly division can help in this situation (Lock & Grange, 2004).

Such as, if a person is addicted to puff two cigarettes in an hour then he or she should try to take one cigarette per hour. At this stage during the process of quitting bad habit, it is significant to replace bad habit with the positive ones. In such a situation, physical exercise, intake of healthy foods, and spending time with friends and family can help overcome a bad habit successfully (Febish, Febish, & Oxley, 2011). For example, if a person is habitual of drinking too many soft drinks, it will be very helpful for such a person to drink a chill glass of water to fulfil the urge of having soft drink.

During the process of overcoming the bad habit, slippage also gives motivation to the person. For example, if a person is aiming to quit habit of eating too many chocolates in order to put off some weight then after following a strict diet plan for two or three weeks that person can eat a piece of cake or a sweet – say once in a fifteen days (Febish, Febish, & Oxley, 2011).

It will give him or her motivation that he or she is not being completely deprived from what he loves to eat the most. It is a known fact that quitting bad habit can make a person frustrated or aggressive. It does not mean that the person starts giving headache to his family members or friends because that person is not getting, what he or she is addicted to (Brizer, 2011).

It is because this attitude can affect their behaviour and relations with others in an adverse manner. One should continue to realize the significant importance of bringing change in the life by quitting a bad habit. Self-motivation and rewarding are other important factors that play key role during the whole process. It is vital to keep on rewarding yourself for all the initial steps you may undertake daily. Also, other people may also reward you (Lock & Grange, 2004). Try to meet those people, who can appreciate you for the change and those who could get motivation from the positive changes in your personality or behaviour.

From the above process analysis of quitting bad habit, it has been observed that the will of a person is the foremost important without which no one can bring change in his or her life. Process of quitting bad habit requires inspiration and courage of face all difficult phases of the process and to attain the targeted aim successfully.

Brizer, D. (2011). Quitting Smoking For Dummies. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.

Febish, G., Febish, G., & Oxley, J. (2011). Food for Thought. New York: Xlibris Corporation.

Lock, J., & Grange, D. (2004). Help your teenager beat an eating disorder. New York: Guilford Press.

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How to Break a Bad Habit and Replace It With a Good One

Bad habits interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. They jeopardize your health — both mentally and physically. And they waste your time and energy.

So why do we still do them? And most importantly, is there anything you can do about it?

I’ve previously written about the science of how habits start , so now let’s focus on the practice of making changes in the real world. How can you delete your bad behaviors and stick to good ones instead?

I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but keep reading and I’ll share what I’ve learned about how to break a bad habit.

What causes bad habits?

Most of your bad habits are caused by two things…

Stress and boredom.

Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spree to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress and boredom. 1

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with stress and boredom, which you can then substitute in place of your bad habits.

Of course, sometimes the stress or boredom that is on the surface is actually caused by deeper issues. These issues can be tough to think about, but if you’re serious about making changes then you have to be honest with yourself.

Are there certain beliefs or reasons that are behind the bad habits? Is there something deeper — a fear, an event, or a limiting belief — that is causing you to hold on to something that is bad for you?

Recognizing the causes of your bad habits is crucial to overcoming them.

You don’t eliminate a bad habit, you replace it.

All of the habits that you have right now — good or bad — are in your life for a reason. In some way, these behaviors provide a benefit to you, even if they are bad for you in other ways.

Sometimes the benefit is biological like it is with smoking or drugs. Sometimes it’s emotional like it is when you stay in a relationship that is bad for you. And in many cases, your bad habit is a simple way to cope with stress. For example, biting your nails, pulling your hair, tapping your foot, or clenching your jaw.

These “benefits” or reasons extend to smaller bad habits as well.

For example, opening your email inbox as soon as you turn on your computer might make you feel connected. At the same time looking at all of those emails destroys your productivity, divides your attention, and overwhelms you with stress. But, it prevents you from feeling like you’re “missing out” … and so you do it again.

Because bad habits provide some type of benefit in your life, it’s very difficult to simply eliminate them. (This is why simplistic advice like “just stop doing it” rarely works.)

Instead, you need to replace a bad habit with a new habit that provides a similar benefit.

For example, if you smoke when you get stressed, then it’s a bad plan to “just stop smoking” when that happens. Instead, you should come up with a different way to deal with stress and insert that new behavior instead of having a cigarette.

In other words, bad habits address certain needs in your life. And for that reason, it’s better to replace your bad habits with a healthier behavior that addresses that same need. If you expect yourself to simply cut out bad habits without replacing them, then you’ll have certain needs that will be unmet and it’s going to be hard to stick to a routine of “just don’t do it” for very long.

How to break a bad habit

Here are some additional ideas for breaking your bad habits and thinking about the process in a new way.

Choose a substitute for your bad habit. You need to have a plan ahead of time for how you will respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. What are you going to do when you get the urge to smoke? (Example: breathing exercises instead.) What are you going to do when Facebook is calling to you to procrastinate? (Example: write one sentence for work.) Whatever it is and whatever you’re dealing with, you need to have a plan for what you will do instead of your bad habit.

Cut out as many triggers as possible. If you smoke when you drink, then don’t go to the bar. If you eat cookies when they are in the house, then throw them all away. If the first thing you do when you sit on the couch is pick up the TV remote, then hide the remote in a closet in a different room. Make it easier on yourself to break bad habits by avoiding the things that cause them.

Right now, your environment makes your bad habit easier and good habits harder. Change your environment and you can change the outcome.

Join forces with somebody. How often do you try to diet in private? Or maybe you “quit smoking” … but you kept it to yourself? (That way no one will see you fail, right?)

Instead, pair up with someone and quit together. The two of you can hold each other accountable and celebrate your victories together. Knowing that someone else expects you to be better is a powerful motivator.

Surround yourself with people who live the way you want to live. You don’t need to ditch your old friends, but don’t underestimate the power of finding some new ones.

Visualize yourself succeeding. See yourself throwing away the cigarettes or buying healthy food or waking up early. Whatever the bad habit is that you are looking to break, visualize yourself crushing it, smiling, and enjoying your success. See yourself building a new identity .

You don’t need to be someone else, you just need to return to the old you. So often we think that to break bad habits, we need to become an entirely new person. The truth is that you already have it in you to be someone without your bad habits. In fact, it’s very unlikely that you had these bad habits all of your life. You don’t need to quit smoking, you just need to return to being a non–smoker. You don’t need to transform into a healthy person, you just need to return to being healthy. Even if it was years ago, you have already lived without this bad habit, which means you can most definitely do it again.

Use the word “but” to overcome negative self–talk. One thing about battling bad habits is that it’s easy to judge yourself for not acting better. Every time you slip up or make a mistake, it’s easy to tell yourself how much you suck. 2

Whenever that happens, finish the sentence with “but”…

• “I’m fat and out of shape, but I could be in shape a few months from now.”
• “I’m stupid and nobody respects me, but I’m working to develop a valuable skill.”
• “I’m a failure, but everybody fails sometimes.”

Plan for failure. We all slip up every now and then.

As my main man Steve Kamb says, “When you screw up, skip a workout, eat bad foods, or sleep in, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you human. Welcome to the club.”

So rather than beating yourself up over a mistake, plan for it. We all get off track, what separates top performers from everyone else is that they get back on track very quickly. For a handful of strategies that can help you bounce back when you make a mistake, read this article .

Where to go from here

If you’re looking for the first step to breaking bad habits, I’d suggest starting with awareness.

It’s easy to get caught up in how you feel about your bad habits. You can make yourself feel guilty or spend your time dreaming about how you wish things were … but these thoughts take you away from what’s actually happening.

Instead, it’s awareness that will show you how to actually make change.

• When does your bad habit actually happen?
• How many times do you do it each day?
• Where are you?
• Who are you with?
• What triggers the behavior and causes it to start?

Simply tracking these issues will make you more aware of the behavior and give you dozens of ideas for stopping it.

Here’s a simple way to start: just track how many times per day your bad habit happens. Put a piece of paper in your pocket and a pen. Each time your bad habit happens, mark it down on your paper. At the end of the day, count up all of the tally marks and see what your total is.

In the beginning your goal isn’t to judge yourself or feel guilty about doing something unhealthy or unproductive. The only goal is to be aware of when it happens and how often it happens. Wrap your head around the problem by being aware of it. Then, you can start to implement the ideas in this article and break your bad habit.

Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but mostly it takes perseverance. Most people who end up breaking bad habits try and fail multiple times before they make it work. You might not have success right away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have it at all.

P.S. If you want more practical ideas for how to build new habits (and break bad habits), check out my book  Atomic Habits , which will show you how small changes in habits can lead to remarkable results.

Hat tip to Leo Babauta for originally talking about stress and boredom driving bad habits.

Hat tip to Scott Young for sharing the great idea about using the word “but” to overcome negative self–talk.

Thanks for reading. You can get more actionable ideas in my popular email newsletter. Each week, I share 3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to think about. Over 3,000,000 people subscribe . Enter your email now and join us.

James Clear writes about habits, decision making, and continuous improvement. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits . The book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 60 languages.

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10 Unhealthy Habits You Need to Change Now

Here are our top 10 daily habits to change to live a healthier, happier life.

Brierley is a dietitian nutritionist, content creator and strategist, and avid mental health advocate. She is co-host and co-creator of the Happy Eating Podcast, a podcast that breaks down the connection between food and mental wellness. Brierley previously served as Food & Nutrition Director for Cooking Light magazine and the Nutrition Editor at EatingWell magazine. She holds a master's degree in Nutrition Communications from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Her work has appeared in Better Homes & Gardens, Southern Living, Real Simple, Livestrong.com, TheKitchn and more.

Elizabeth Ward is a registered dietitian and award-winning nutrition communicator and writer. She has authored or co-authored 10 books for consumers about nutrition at all stages of life.

1. Not Drinking Enough Water

2. eating late at night, 3. not getting enough exercise, 4. skimping on sleep, 5. eating too much sodium.

• 6. Choosing Foods Because They 'Sound Healthy'

7. Eating Lunch at Your Desk

8. cooking everything in olive oil, 9. skipping dessert, 10. not changing or sanitizing your kitchen sponge frequently enough.

Pictured recipe: Lemon, Cucumber & Mint Infused Water

Some of the things you do—or don't do—every day might be getting in the way of your efforts to be healthier. As you read this list of daily habits, don't beat yourself up if you find many of them resonate with you. We all have things we could change. And change can be hard—but there are some things that can help make it a little easier.

For example, a 2020 study in Frontiers in Psychology suggests that practicing new habits consistently and in the same context helps them become more automatic so that you don't have to think about them as much to do them. For example, let's say you want to eat more vegetables. You could choose lunch to start with and decide that you'll have at least one serving of vegetables at lunch each day. Lunch becomes your trigger to eat more vegetables—and once that habit is formed, you can build on it.

Another tool to try is habit stacking. This takes a habit you already have and piggybacks the new habit onto it. For example, let's say you want to start your day by drinking water. You could habit stack this with brushing your teeth in the morning. So, after you brush your teeth, you'll drink a glass of water.

Or piggyback it with two habits—going to bed and getting up in the morning. In this case, you could fill your glass of water at bedtime, so your trigger to fill your glass is getting ready for bed. Now when you get up—which is your trigger to drink the water—it's there.

There is no one perfect way to change habits. And if you lapse—which is likely when forming new habits—simply learn from it and keep going. Research, including a 2019 study in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine suggests that making specific goals and writing them down increases your chances of success.

Take a look at these 10 habits to see if there are any areas where you can make a healthy change. While it can be tempting to take on a bunch of new habits at once, working on one at a time and consistently practicing it will help change your brain and make the habit automatic.

Water accounts for 60% of your body, so it's not too surprising that drinking water benefits your total body health . Staying hydrated helps to keep your memory sharp, your mood stable and your motivation intact.

Keeping up with your fluids helps your skin stay supple, helps your body cool down when it's hot, allows your muscles and joints to work better and helps clean toxins from your body via your kidneys.

So, how much water should you be drinking? According to the National Academy of Sciences , adult men need about 13 cups per day of fluid, and adult women need about 9. That recommendation includes 2 1/2 cups of fluid from foods and also counts the fluid in coffee, tea and other soft drinks toward your fluid needs.

But because one size doesn't fit all, the best way to know if you're adequately hydrated is to monitor your urine color: If it's light yellow (the color of lemonade or straw), that means you're probably drinking enough.

There are a couple of reasons to consider having dinner earlier. Researchers suspect that eating dinner later and close to bedtime changes how the food is digested, including how fat is processed. This could lead to weight gain, per a 2020 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism .

Another reason is that you may sleep better. A 2020 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health suggests that eating close to bedtime can disrupt sleep quality.

And if you have gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a 2022 review in Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management suggests that eating within three hours of bedtime makes acid reflux worse through the night.

Physical activity has so many benefits to our health that we can't name them all here (but we'll try). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , exercise helps manage weight; improves brain health; strengthens bones, muscles, heart and lungs; helps you sleep better; improves mental health and reduces the risk of depression and anxiety; improves focus and judgment; improves the ability to perform everyday activities; prevents falls; helps manage blood sugar; and reduces the risk of chronic disease.

According to a 2020 review in Cold Springs Harbor Perspectives in Medicine , exercise is associated with longer life. This is because it delays the onset of at least 40 chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that all healthy adults perform moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes five days a week or vigorous-intensity activity for at least 20 minutes three days a week. They also recommend muscle-strengthening activities at least twice a week.

It's important that you start where you're at and progressively increase the intensity and frequency of your exercise over time. One big mistake people make is going all out from the beginning and quickly burning out. Set big goals but start small and work up to your bigger goals.

You know that falling short of sleep is a major no-no, but why—what's the big deal? According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) , not getting enough shut-eye can impact a whole slew of things. For starters, it can compromise your immune system, as well as your judgment and ability to make decisions—which can result in making mistakes or being injured.

Sleep deficiency is also linked to several chronic health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity and depression, per the NHLBI.

Being sleep-deprived may make it harder for you to lose weight if you're dieting—and more likely that you'll give in to that sweet temptation tomorrow.

While there is no magic number of hours to sleep (and the number changes with age), the NHLBI recommends 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night for adults. It's important to listen to your body and try to get the amount of sleep that your body needs to function at its best.

Pictured recipe: Air-Fryer Turkey Stuffed Peppers

According to the CDC, 90% of Americans eat about 1,000 milligrams more sodium each day than we should. Restaurant foods and processed foods both tend to be very high in sodium. One of the easiest ways to reduce your sodium intake is to cook at home using fresh ingredients. To decrease your sodium intake even further, try boosting the flavor of food cooked at home with herbs and spices rather than salt.

6. Choosing Foods Because They 'Sound Healthy'

More and more food labels are sporting health benefits on their labels. If such claims lure you in, know that just because a product lacks fat or gluten or carbs doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier. For example, fat-free products often deliver more sugar than their counterparts to make up for the flavor the product lacks from having the fat removed—and many full-fat options are the healthier choice.

Avoid being duped by a healthy-sounding label claim by comparing the nutrition facts panels and ingredient lists across brands of the same food category. It's worth stating that some of the healthiest foods at the grocery store don't have any packaging or branding—like fruits and vegetables.

Pictured recipe: Zucchini Noodles with Quick Turkey Bolognese

It's all too easy to munch on your midday meal desk-side, but according to 2022 research published in Appetite , distracted eating was correlated to higher body weight. Researchers recommend shutting off devices and taking a break from work so that you can focus on what you're eating, enjoying your food and noticing when you're starting to feel full.

Even though olive oil is packed with heart-healthy antioxidants (called polyphenols) and monounsaturated fats, there are times when it's not the best choice for cooking . Why? Because olive oil has a lower smoke point than some other oils (that's the point at which an oil literally begins to smoke, and olive oil's is between 365°F and 420°F).

When you heat olive oil to its smoke point, the beneficial compounds in the oil start to degrade, and potentially health-harming compounds form. So if you're cooking over high heat, skip it and choose a different oil.

When is olive oil a good idea? It's a great choice for making salad dressing or sautéing vegetables over medium heat.

You may think you're doing a good thing by skipping sweet treats. But studies, like the 2022 review in Einstein (Sao Paulo) suggest that feeling deprived—even if you are consuming plenty of calories—can trigger overeating. And making any food off-limits just increases its allure.

So if it's something sweet you're craving, go for it. One ounce of dark chocolate or 1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream clocks in 170 and 137 calories, respectively.

This might not be something you think about regularly, but your kitchen sponge can be a cesspool of bacteria, molds and yeast, according to a 2020 study in BMC Public Health . And some of these microbes can make you sick. Add to that, if you're using the sponge to wipe down your sink, kitchen counter, stove and refrigerator shelves, you're providing the perfect transportation for cross-contamination.

It's important to disinfect your sponge every day by microwaving it wet for two minutes and replacing it frequently—at least every two weeks.

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on a habit | psychology.

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After reading this article you will learn about Habit:- 1. Nature of Habit 2. Characteristics of Habit 3. Relationship between Habit and Actions 4. Laws 5. Functions 6. Rules of Breaking Bad Habits .

Essay # Nature of Habit:

A habit is the product of repeated voluntary actions. When a voluntary action is repeated very often, it is turned into a habit. Voluntary actions involve an effort of will or volition. But when they become habitual, they dispense with the guidance of attention and volition, and become automatic. Habitual actions are acquired.

They are sometimes called secondarily automatic actions, because they are uniform and mechanical, and are performed with ease and facility. Running, reading, writing, type-writing, swimming, etc., are habitual actions. They are the results of repeated voluntary actions. They are learned actions as distinguished from unlearned actions. Instinctive acts also may by repeated and fixed as habits.

Essay # Characteristics of Habit:

(a) Habitual actions are uniform actions. Voluntary actions vary in their nature in order to adjust the organism to new situations. But habitual actions performed in the same way. A person talks or writes in the same way.

(b) Habitual actions are performed prom­ptly. The stronger is the habit, the quicker is the motor response to the situation. The soldiers who parade every day perform the required movements quickly as soon as they hear the commands of an officer.

(c) Habitual actions are performed not only prom­ptly, but also accurately. The stronger is the habit the more precise is the motor response. The soldiers perform the precise movements in a parade in execution of the officer’s commands.

(d) Habitual actions are performed automatically without the guidance of attention and consciousness. If they are attended to, they are hindered. When we attend to buttoning our coats or tying the laces of our shoes, the normally habitual actions are thwarted and lose their automatic nature. But habitual actions are started by attention, and carried on automatically without attention.

(v) Habitual actions are performed with ease and facility. As habits are firmly established, they diminish fatigue. The miners do not feel fatigue when they are accustomed to their work. The chief difference between the skilled and the unskilled workman is that the former trains his brain and the letters trains his muscles.

(f) The stronger is the habit, the greater is the difficulty of breaking it. An inveterate drunkard finds it extremely difficult to break the habit of drinking. Habits leave mental dispositions and physiological dispositions which compel the individual to perform them.

A habitual opium-eater feels an irresistible impulse to take doses of opium regularly. Habits resists modification. They are characterised by resistance to modification.

Essay # Relationship between Habit and Actions:

(a) Habit and Instinct:

Habits and instincts are alike marked by uniformity and facility. They are both mechanical and accurate. They both give rise to periodic cravings, as in smoking, drinking, etc. They both dispense with the guidance of volition. They are non-voluntary in their nature.

But there is an important difference between them. Instincts are innate, while habits are learned by repeated voluntary actions. Sometimes instincts are said to be racial habits while habits are said to be individual habits.

(b) Habit and Reflex Action:

A habit and a reflex action are alike prompt and uniform in character. Both are automatic and mechanical. Both are without the guidance of consciousness, attention, and volition. But the reflex action is native, while the habitual action is acquired.

The former is simple, while the latter is complex. For example, swimming is a very complex action, while sneezing is a simple action. Swimming is a habitual action, while sneezing is a sensation-reflex.

(c) Habit and Voluntary Action:

A habit is the product of repeated voluntary actions. It is mechanical and uniform in nature. But a voluntary action is the new response to a novel situation. The new response is exploratory and tentative, while habit is fixed and definite. The new response is slow and uncertain, while habit is fairly quick and accurate. The new response is variable, while habit is regular.

The new response is attended by effort and strained attention, while habit is easy and often, only half-conscious. The new response is apt to be un­satisfying to the one who makes it, whole habit is comfortable and a source of satisfaction. To break a habit is most uncomfortable. To do it we must form a counter-habit, or opposite habit.

(d) Habit, Character and Conduct:

Habits are results of repeated voluntary actions. They are the foundation of character. Good habits build good character. Bad (habits build bad character. Character is the permanent bent of the mind, constituted by settled habits of will. It is a system of permanent tendencies or dispositions to thought, emotions and actions voluntarily acquired.

Character is the result of habits of thought, emotion and will. Ethical writers lay stress on habits of the will in the formation of character.

But habits of thought and emotional habits are equally important factors in the formation of character McDougall emphasize the importance of sentiments, especially the sentiment or self-regard, as the foundation of character. The sentiment of self-regard is the highest sentiment under which all other sentiments are organized.

Character is different from nature. Nature is innate, but charac­ter is acquired. Character is acquired by an individual who has voluntary actions. It is built up by a person out of his natural impulses by controlling and regulating them by reason.

Natural impulses are converted into desires by self-consciousness. The desires are turned by the self into volitions. These volitions are converted into habits by repetition. Habits produce a permanent disposition which we call character. Natural impulses are the given elements which supply the self with raw materials for the formation of character.

Character, on the other hand, is the acquired habit of controlling and regulating these impulsive tendencies by will or volition in conformity with consciously conceived ends. Character is the habitual mode in which the will regulates natural impulses and desires.

It is the result of volitions, which, are, in their turn, regulated by it. The self-acquired character is the result of volitions. Volitions are determined by the character of the self.

Character is expressed in conduct. Conduct is the outer expression of character. It includes voluntary and habitual actions. They are overt or outward actions. They are determined by charac­ter of the self. Character is not absolutely fixed and permanent.

It grows and develops. Free acts of will alter the character already formed. These volitions are partly determined by past character. But they are free volitions of the self, though they are influenced by past character. Thus, neither character nor conduct is fixed and unalterable. They are plastic and modifiable. They are modified by each other.

Essay # Laws of Habit- Formation of Habit:

William James gives four laws of formation of habits.

They are the following:

(a) Begin a new habit with a firm resolution. If you make a start with a firm determination, it often carries you along and fixes the habit. If you want to rise early in the morning, first make a firm resolve to do it.

(b) Seize the first opportunity to put the new resolve into practice. When you have made a firm resolve to rise early, begin it the very next day. Do not wait for the first day of the next months or the New Year’s Day to start to work. If you do so, your resolution will become weak and inspiration will vanish.

(c) Never allow an exception to occur till the new habit is well-learned. Once you have started rising early, continue the action from day to day and never allow an exception on any pretext. If you break it once, the pathway that is formed in the nervous system will become faint, your resolve will become weak, and you may revert to your old habit. But do not permit an exception to occur, and the new habit will be formed.

(d) Keep yourself young by a little free practice every day. In order to cultivate the strength of mind, you should perform a difficult action every day which requires a great effort of will. Habits make us conservative. We move in fixed grooves of thought and action.

But we must be open to new ideas, to new methods. We can best do this according to James, by a little practice of doing some­thing new and difficult every day.

Essay # Functions of Habits:

Many bodily habits e.g., habits of personal cleanliness are fixed during childhood. Habits of dressing, behaving with others, moral and religious habits, are fixed during adolescence. Pro­fessional habits are naturally acquired later. The people belonging to different professions have their characteristic gestures, attitudes, and habits of thought and action. These habits help mental develop­ment.

Habits play an important role in mental development. They set the mind free to acquire knowledge of new things and perform new actions in new situations. The mind can pass from victory to victory on account of habits which are handed over to the body. Without habits we can never make any progress.

But habits are also a drag to mental progress. They keep the mind within the fixed grooves of thought and action. They make the mind conservative. So the mind should be on the alert to respond to new ideas and new ways, of life in novel situations.

The mind should be alive to broader and truer ideas of life and cultivate wider and wider interests. It should not be a slave of habits. When Harvey discovered circulation of blood in the body, men above forty shook their heads, but younger men readily accepted the truth of his new discovery.

Essay # Rules of Breaking Bad Habits:

Habits may be either good or bad. Good habits should be cultivated. Bad habits should be broken.

We should observe the following rules to break bad habits:

(a) Stop the bad habit at once; do not wait for a suitable opportunity. Do not gradually break a bad habit, if the result be not physically injurious. Stop the habit of smoking or drinking or rising late at once.

(b) Cultivate a positive counter-habit. Do not try merely to stop the bad habit. Try, if possible, to from a good habit in place of it. If you are in the habit of going to the cinema every evening, try to form the habit of listening to radio music at that time.

A drunkard may cultivate the habit of taking hot milk instead of wine at stated times. He should continue the habit until he feels sure that the grip of the old habit is loosened.

(c) Live in an environment, which is favourable to the forma­tion of a good habit and the breaking of a bad habit, and which offers the least possible temptation. Try to have a congenial environ­ment. Give up the company of the habitual cinema-goers if you want to break the habit of cinema-going. A drunkard must give up the company of drunkards and keep the company of sober people.

(d) Make your body an ally instead of your enemy. The nervous system is the physiological basis of habits. Nervous path-ways are formed in the nervous system by habitual actions. There must be effected by steady, persistent and continuous formation of positive counter-habits. Mere penitent mood will not be enough to break old habits. Form good habits in place of bad habits.

Related Articles:

• Habits: Meaning, Characteristics and Role
• Difference between Voluntary and Non-Voluntary Actions | Psychology
• Habit Formation: Basis, Types and Measures for Effective Habit Formation
• Major Advantages and Disadvantages of Habit Formation

Special Report: Is Social Media Misuse A Bad Habit or Harmful Addiction?

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We Can’t Unsee What We Saw

The debate was bad. the spin is somehow even worse..

There are times in all of our lives when we see things we wish we hadn’t. It could be a text, sent or received by a loved one, that reveals a secret. It could be a bill or bank statement, left out at a friend’s house, that tells a different financial story than what you thought you knew about your friend. It could be a shitty test result, confirming something you’d previously been able to deny.

Or it could be last Thursday’s presidential debate, which revealed that President Biden is indeed an old man who appears to be in no condition to be running this country, even now—not to mention in another four years.

The debate was shocking, upsetting, nearly impossible to watch. Based on my anecdotal research, lots of folks turned it off after 10 minutes, unable to witness the humiliating performance by our current president. Others held out hope it would turn around in real time, that Biden’s jaw would be vacuumed shut again, eyes refocused. Still more of us had the sinking, correct assumption: This would not come to pass. We knew what was happening. We were watching the president of the United States, un-teleprompted, fail in a spectacularly human way in front of us. He was not OK. Which meant the impending presidential election was more like an impending disaster.

But even worse than those unbearable 90 minutes has been the spin that followed. Democratic operatives and Biden’s friends in high places came to his defense; Barack Obama himself brushed off the president’s dismal performance, posting on Twitter that “bad debate nights happen.” C’mon. Yes, a bad debate night happened to Obama when he was running again in 2012. A bad debate night is not what happened last week.

Pushing this line is offensive, and contemptuous of the American voting public. Everyone saw the same debate: It was reality rubbing human mortality in our faces. Biden is old, and the process of his aging seems to be accelerating, as it is wont to do. We all know old people. We know how different the 60s are from the 70s, and the 70s are from the 80s. We’ve all witnessed the decline that comes in the slow march toward the end, likely in circumstances that were unbelievably personal and sorrowful. What I am trying to say is: We know what we saw last Thursday. And like those relationship-changing texts and bad test results, we cannot unsee what we saw.

The effort to convince us that it really wasn’t that bad will continue. Biden’s campaign will keep reiterating that those closest to the president—his wife Jill and son Hunter, first and foremost—are standing by him, urging him to stay in, because they are the ones who know what he is “really” like, and they think he’s up for it. But the swell from the media is building to counter that, and that’s good. It’s our job to say what is really happening out there, even if it is unpleasant and inconvenient.

Could we have been more forcefully pushing on Biden’s age before? Sure, and some reporters have been trying. But even with the evidence of the number—Biden is 81—pressing too hard seemed to be edging into a hypothetical space. He seemed good; the State of the Union was a success, he looked invigorated at rallies. Only now does it feel so obvious that in those encounters, Biden was scripted, prompted, controlled. Everything mediated by people motivated to protect him personally and politically. Now, we regular folks have seen him unplugged. It’s not pretty. Aging only goes in one direction.

On Friday morning, my 78-year-old mom, a rational, registered independent in Pennsylvania, texted me: “We are not Trump fans, but poor Biden was so bad last night… I felt sorry for the man.” That is kindness from a fellow senior citizen. But I felt rage, and still do. My anger isn’t even really at Biden himself. I am mad at the Democratic Party, which seems to truck along with a mission of its own while remaining wedded to the past. I know what it feels like for voters to be energized by their candidate. Remember 2008? It was seemingly against all odds that Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, beating Hillary Clinton who … then became the predetermined candidate in 2016. And that time, the energy was different. I got on board and voted for her, don’t get me wrong. But everything about that candidacy was locked down. There was little room for a prospective challenger. Bernie Sanders, whose candidacy I dismissed too easily (because I thought he was too old!) and Martin O’Malley (remember him?) were the only two to step up. It was Hillary’s turn. We got with the program. And then we lost.

Now, we are being urged again to get on board and do this thing. Finish the job! We need to go with the guy with the record, with the experience, with the delegates. He beat Trump before—no one else has done that, don’t you realize that? No one else can do that, Biden defenders keep telling us.

Well, who knows. But I do know that trying to wish last Thursday night away is only going to make me angrier. I’m up for rolling the dice. We can’t unsee what we saw. And I, for one, don’t want to see it again.

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Avoid fraud: Here are dos, don’ts for credit and debit cards

Fraud exceeded $5 billion in 2023.

Robert Breuer , Editor

ORLANDO, Fla. – A new study by Security.org , a team of product review specialists, found that 60% of 1,000 people surveyed had experienced credit card fraud at least once and 45% have experienced fraud multiple times.

In 2023, 52 million Americans had fraudulent charges on their credit or debit cards, with unauthorized purchases exceeding $5 billion nationwide.

Corie Wagner, a senior industry analyst, tells News 6, “Debit and credit card transactions are more common than cash today. So it gives digital criminals just an ever increasing number of opportunities to commit fraud.”

The Security.org survey of about 1,000 people showed that 60% of them were a victim of fraud at least once, and 45% were victims multiple times.

The survey also found that most unauthorized transactions involve credit cards that weren’t lost or physically stolen. According to the survey, 93% of fraudulent charges involved credit cards still in the owner’s possession. In other words, Americans’ account information is being stolen digitally.

Security.org compiled a list of bad habits to avoid and good habits that people can use to make their financial information more secure.

Bad habits to avoid:

• Using the same credit cards for autopay and everyday spending
• Using the same password for more than one online account
• Storing credit card info in your browser or websites
• Using public Wi-Fi connections or free VPNs

Good habits:

• Review credit card statements
• Subscribe to email/text alerts for my credit and debit cards
• Use multi-factor authentication or face ID to access credit card accounts online
• Use an online password manager
• Subscribe to credit monitoring service

Wagner said parents should consider credit monitoring subscriptions because more fraudsters are “opening up credit cards in children’s names.”

The Federal Trade Commission found 22,226 reports of identity theft victims under the age of 19 in 2023 and 6,979 victims under the age of 19 already through March of this year.

Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.

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Guest Essay

A Principled Supreme Court, Unnerved by Trump

By William Baude

Mr. Baude is a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.

At the end of another momentous term, the Supreme Court has issued major rulings that will reshape the law. Like much that the court does today, these decisions, in areas like administrative law, have been widely criticized as corrupt or illegitimate.

For the most part, this criticism does not give the Supreme Court enough credit. In case after case, it has rightly emphasized the importance of turning to historical understandings in deciding constitutional cases rather than imposing modern policy views. Most of the court’s decisions are principled and sound — most but unfortunately not all.

There were two particularly salient blemishes on the court’s performance this year — and they are particularly unfortunate because they related to Donald Trump.

Still, for most of the term, the court based its decisions on historical understandings. Perhaps most significant, it has imposed important limitations on the administrative state, sharply limiting the ability of agencies to impose regulatory fines without a jury and holding that courts, rather than agencies, will be in charge of deciding whether ambiguous laws forbid new agency initiatives. The court has also increased the power of cities to displace unhoused people from public spaces, curtailing an activist string of rulings from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In these cases, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented orally from the bench. Yet the same logic has led to some victories for the Biden administration, too.

The court rejected an important challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s appropriations structure in an originalist opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, with an emphatic concurrence about the importance of history joined by the cross-ideological group of Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The court upheld a federal gun control statute dealing with domestic violence by an 8-to-1 vote, with many justices thoughtfully discussing the role of history in shaping these cases.

In other high-profile cases, the court has insisted on enforcing the Constitution’s limits on judicial power, rejecting challenges brought by conservative activists because they lacked standing to bring those challenges into federal court. In doing so, the court showed that the doctrine of standing, which has often been used to curb lawsuits by environmentalists and consumer protection groups, can also be used to block right-wing lawsuits and is not just a shield for one cause or ideology.

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