Minimalist Living Tips: Break The Bad Habits Affecting Your Quality Of Life
Bad habits can bob energy and joy from your life and should be avoided. If you do the research you will find many strategies and suggestions for ways to break the bad habits that affect the quality of your life.
We all struggle with bad habits, some of us more than others. bad habits can be fun and some bad habits can be more fun than others. As a result, avoiding them can be difficult and sometimes seem almost impossible.
You will often find tips, tricks, and strategies offered by science and popular culture. What if I told you I know of a better way? No more bogus tips, tricks, and folklore.
There are easy and simpler ways to get rid of bad habits and enhance your life.
Minimalist Living is the practice of evaluating all aspects of your life and retaining all that adds value and sparks happiness and curtailing or eliminating those that do not.
Try these Minimalists Living tips to break the bad habits affecting your quality of life.
What Are Bad Habits?
A bad habit is a negative behavior pattern, plain and simple. It is widely believed there is a Trigger, Routine, or Reward that makes up the properties of a bad habit, and when repeated enough it becomes second nature.
That is one of the many reasons bad habits become difficult to break.
Bad habits eventually become instinctive and difficult to notice causing the bad habit to become increasingly worst over time.
Bad habits exhaust energy, become time-consuming, and destructive, and create roadblocks making it more difficult for us to reach our goals.
Minimalist living puts a focus on simplifying life to the chunks we enjoy most and believes these minimalists Living-inspired tips are a great way to break the bad habits affecting the quality of your life.
Bad Habits are really Hard To break, Duh!
Remember the Trigger, Routine, and Reward characteristics of bad habits? They are the irresistible proposition that makes bad habits so appealing initially.
Here is a typical bad habit scenario I have learned to avoid.
My Trigger would be a very difficult or stressful day. (Try as I may I can’t totally avoid those).
The Routine, as a result, would be a glass of wine or a few beers to unwind when I got home.
The Reward would be I would relax and forget about the difficult and stressful day.
Seems harmless, right?
Well, it is.
Many people engage in this exact Trigger, Routine, and Reward scenario every day. It became a bad habit for me to have more than one drink after a difficult or stressful day.
When I enjoy more than one drink it leads to maybe another, then Netflix, and then finally going to bed at 2 am. LOL.
OK, Here are the Minimalist Living Tips to break the bad habits affecting your quality of life.
Minimalist Living Tips To Break The Bad Habits
The key to breaking bad habits is to recognize when you are engaging in a bad habit and not beat yourself up about it. Smile and don’t become upset or frustrated about it.
Most of the time engaging in a bad habit can sneak up on you. You may not even realize it.
Just recognize it and handle it accordingly when you do because bad habits are not healthy. BREAK THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
1. Acknowledge
Make it a point to acknowledge the triggers that lead to bad habits. when recognized these triggers put your foot down. Don’t rationalize it.
No, it is not harmless.
No, not just this one time.
Put a stop to it then and there.
Recognize the cravings.
Use the undesirable end result that unusually occurs when you engage in that particular bad habit as motivation to not ever go down that road again.
Practice! Do not beat yourself up for not always being successful. Practice makes perfect.
Remember the situations that triggered engaging in bad habits in the past. Practice the response you will have the next time that situation occurs. Hopefully, it will be better.
Your solution may be as simple as saying no or just avoiding the situation entirely. You be the judge. Just practice until it becomes second nature to avoid surprises.
This type of preparedness will help you to better control your actions and make better decisions in the long term. If the behavior does not add value or spark joy you don’t have time for it.
2. Confirm
Confirm it. I confirm I should not have a beer in the evening if I would like to get up early and refreshed to start an important day. I don’t give in, I just accept it. There are other times I can enjoy a few beers.
There are times I think about it and I have to laugh because I know I would be looking at the clock with dread at 2 am if I started down that road.
I can have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner when I have just a normal day planned the next day. Binge-watching your favorite shows in the devil. LOL.
Whenever you get the urge to succumb to what you know to be a bad habit just confirm it is a bad habit in your mind. No excuses. No explanations. Confirm that action is a bad habit. SAY NO!
3. Ask Questions
Once you confirm the urge to act badly don’t fight it. Don’t ignore it. Feel it. Understand it. it’s a life Robing enemy. Don’t let it win. Look it in the eye and defiantly tell it no.
You are under attack.
Tell yourself you are not going to allow bad habits to continue to lessen the quality of your life. Understand the urges and feelings and devise a game plan to defeat them.
Just avoiding or breaking bad habits is not good enough. We are talking about the quality of life for you and your family.
Bad habits do not add value or happiness.
4. Take Note
You can write it down but I usually take a mental note of when I get the urge to succumb to bad habits. Learn your triggers. Don’t believe the false promise of rewards bad habits may offer and try to avoid them altogether.
Not only avoid them. Learn to avoid putting yourself in a position where it would be necessary. It may sound silly but give it a try.
There is nothing wrong with taking another way home every once in a while to avoid that evil bakery you love so much. LOL.
I had a Boxer puppy that was almost a year old. Boxers are a flashy breed and the puppies have an enormous amount of energy. He would innocently run up to other animals and people ready to play.
One day while walking we turned the corner down the street from his favorite park and surprised a cat near a parked car.
It did not end well for him as you could imagine. He ran up to play with that street cat and that cat kicked his butt. He did not know what hit him. My dog was like “What the hell just happened?” LOL.
For years after whenever we approached that corner, he would slow down, approach cautiously ready for a fight. If there was a parked car in the area he would slowly circle searching under it for that cat.
He learned the reality of the big cruel world. Avoid dropping his guard around a strange animal and be careful turning the corner in the big bad city. We both took note.
If I were a better dad I would not have even put him in a position to have to avoid avoiding a bad habit. LOL.
5. Enjoy.
Bad habits adversely affect our lives and the less we engage in them the better off we will be. Time-wasting bad habits like checking our email every 5 minutes, spending hours on social media and binge-watching movies are usually coping mechanisms.
They just give you a shot of temporary fake joy. What you really would like is to spend real quality time with family and good friends.
Don’t harshly judge yourself. If you make a mistake or give in to a bad habit don’t worry about it. It will happen. Experience the joy of not worrying and worrying.
Conclusion
Bad habits can be annoying and some can amount to addiction and become dangerous. If you believe you need help with breaking the bad habit affecting your life don’t hesitate to seek professional help.
In most cases following the Minimalist Living principle will assist in breaking bad habits. Follow the suggestions above to break the bad habits affecting your quality of life.
Enjoy and celebrate your victories and progress. What are some of your bad habits? How do you avoid or overcome them?
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