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1/29/2020 0 Comments

How to Break Bad Habits

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“How do I break bad habits?” is a question I get asked a lot.  

We all have “bad habits” or habits that don’t serve us well.  Maybe they are unhealthy or they might limit your productivity.  Your bad habit might even interfere with your personal growth or performance in some way.  If you’re noticing that you have a habit that does any of those things, it may be time to break it.

Breaking a bad habit is very similar to building new habits, except in reverse.  As we know, building a new habit involves removing barriers, obstacles, and friction.  However, in breaking bad habits, we need to do the exact opposite. That means placing barriers, obstacles, and friction in between you and the habit you are hoping to break.  This small act then makes it more difficult to engage in the habit you are trying to break.  

Like many of you, I too have had several habits that I’ve needed to break.  Most recently, I’ve developed a habit of eating too many of my absolute favorite dessert treats at the end of my day.  Once I realized this was becoming a problem, I decided that instead of eating 2-3 of these per night, I’d rather limit it to one.  What I decided to do was remove my desserts from the freezer in my kitchen and place them all in the freezer in my basement. What this did was place a barrier between myself and the desserts, and as a result it decreased the likelihood of myself making a second or third trip to the basement for more.   

Here’s another example.  Maybe you have a habit of hitting “snooze” in the morning when your alarm goes off.  You set your alarm for 6am, hit snooze one too many times, and before you know it- it's 7am.  How can you break this habit? Think of ways to put more barriers, obstacles, and friction between you and the snooze button.  This might mean removing your alarm from within arm’s reach and moving it further away, i.e. across the room or in a different room completely.  This would place a barrier, obstacle, or friction between you and the habit you want to break.  

Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals?  

To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.  ​
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1/28/2020 0 Comments

Forming New Habits, Pt. 2

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Now that we know willpower is not enough to form new habits, I want to talk about two more strategies that can help you to form and continue to strengthen new habits.  

Rewards

​Yes, rewards! No, they are not just for children.  Rewards can be a very healthy and strategic way to help you to form a new habit.  Research tells is that immediate rewards are excellent for helping to reinforce a new habit.  In other words, when you engage in a new behavior and you want it to become a habit, rewarding yourself immediately after engaging in the behavior will help your brain to learn that this is a good thing to do and that you should keep doing it.

For example, if you want to create a habit of drinking more water and you plan to reward yourself at the end of the month for meeting your water goals, the likelihood of you meeting this goal is low.  This is because you are forcing yourself to wait an entire month to experience the rewards of all your hard work.  Instead, I would recommend that you reward yourself more frequently.  Ideally, the reward should be small, frequent, yet enticing enough to keep you motivated and encouraged about your new habit.  

Temptation Bundling

One trick that works extremely well is “temptation bundling”.  What this means is forming a new habit by bundling the behavior you want to become a habit with something you already really enjoy.  The trick?  You are only allowed to engage in the thing you really enjoy when you are actively engaged in the behavior you are working to make habit.  

Another example:  If you want to develop a new habit of exercising and you know that you love listening to a particular podcast, that means that when you exercise, you will be able to treat yourself by listening to your favorite podcast.  However, you are only allowed to listen to the podcast while exercise.  

Temptation bundling takes a bit of self-discipline, however it is extremely effective and will definitely help you to form and strengthen that new habit. 

Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals?  

To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.  ​
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1/5/2020 0 Comments

Forming New Habits, Pt. 1

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​It is completely a myth that new habits are formed because of willpower.  We often hear people say “I just don’t have enough willpower to make this change.”  Well...that's not entirely true.  The most important thing to consider when attempting to form new habits is the actual science behind forming new habits.  

The thing about habits is that they are very automatic and unconscious.  We generally don’t think much when we are engaging in our most solidified habits, which is why it has very little to do with willpower.  That is the goals when forming new habits.  We want this behavior to become automatic and unconscious, and there are many researched based strategies that can help us achieve this.  This article will talk about two strategies that will help you form a new habit. 

​Remove Barriers and Obstacles

​The first thing to consider when attempting to form new habits is the level of difficulty.  If there are a lot of barriers between you and the change you want to make, or if there is a lot of friction while you are attempting to make this change, then the likelihood is that this change may not form into a habit.  It's best to think about how to take the level of difficulty from high to low.  How do we remove all the barriers that live between you and this change so that there does not need to be a lot of excessive effort.

For example, if you want to form a habit of going to the gym more frequently, you should choose a gym that is 1 mile away from your house instead of the gym that is 10 miles away.  This is because it is easier to get to the closest gym.  In this scenario, time and distance are barriers and we want to eliminate them as much as possible. 

Another example- If you want to form a habit of drinking more water, you need to make sure you have a water bottle readily available to you at all times.  You shouldn’t leave your water bottle downstairs or in a different room.  Keeping the bottle or other means of accessing water nearby makes it easier to actually consume the water and removes any barriers related to inaccessibility to water. 

​Repetition Is Key

The second thing to consider when attempting to form a new habit is repetition, or how repetitively are you engaging in this change.  If you are only engaging in this new changed behavior once a week, once a month, or even less frequent, the likelihood of this becoming a habit is very low.  However, if you are engaging in this new change frequently, i.e. multiple times per day or at least once a day, then the likelihood of this change becoming a habit is even higher.  So repetition is key!  We want this change to be something that is occurring over and over again until it becomes more automatic and unconscious.  

Are you feeling ready to form better habits and work toward your personal development goals?  

To book your personal development consultation or talk more with Dr. Amber Thornton about personal development, book your FREE 15 minute consultation here.  ​
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    Dr. Amber Thornton

    Clinical Psychologist | Personal Development Consultant | Balanced Working Mama Coach | Speaker | Mental Health Expert

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