12: Eliminating Bad Habits

Welcome to the Women's Success Coach Podcast. A podcast created to inspire growth and to help you learn, achieve, and evolve in your life ongoing regardless of your age. I'm your host, certified coach, and licensed therapist Karen Vincent, and I'm here to guide you and provide you with concrete tips and strategies you can implement in your life. I'm also here to inspire you, challenge you, and cheer you on so that you can create the life of your dreams and beyond. In today's podcast episode, I'm talking more about habits, but not the good kind. Today I'm talking about bad habits because I think just as it is important to understand how to form positive success habits, it is also important to understand why bad habits occur, why they can be challenging to change, and what is happening with your brain when you keep saying you want to stop doing something but you don't. In today's shorty episode, I'm going to break this all down for you and give you a four step process you can use to help you eliminate bad habits. So let's get to. Well, hello. Today we're talking about bad habits and how you can eliminate them. If you haven't already listened to podcast episode number 11 on Building Success Habits, I encourage you to go do that after listening to this one. I believe that it's just as important to understand why bad habits, form, and sometimes stick around for so long, as it is to build success habit. Have you ever found yourself saying that you no longer want to do a certain behavior, yet you keep going back to it? Maybe it's overspending, overdrinking, over scrolling or overeating. Or maybe it's the habit of procrastination, being late, or not following through with what you say you were going to do. Maybe it's negative self-talk, sabotaging relationships, or maybe it's things like biting your nails, watching too much television, or not picking up after yourself. This list could go on forever and regardless of the bad habit or habits you engage in, the information I'm going to share with you today applies. Habits become habits when they become automatic and we don't necessarily have to think about doing them. They just happen. This is why it's so great to have success habits because they just happen and they help you move in the direction you want to go. This is also why it can be so problematic to have bad habits, because they just happen and they pull you further from where it is that you want to go. The key to changing bad habits, in my opinion, is to uncover what the reward is for doing them If they didn't result in any kind of a reward, you wouldn't do them. Or minimally, they'd be pretty easy to stop doing. The reward or the reinforcement is specific for you, and it can be obvious for some behaviors, but not for others. So let's think about some pretty common bad habits. Let's start with overeating. The reward is that the food tastes good, maybe you're even getting a dopamine hit from some sugar, and the food feels soothing as you are eating it. If you look at overdrinking, the reward is that it feels like maybe you're reducing stress and or that you are distracting yourself from something else. It may also be reinforced if it's something you do with other people when you're having fun. If we look at procrastination, the reward there is that you're delaying doing something that may not be enjoyable, it may feel challenging, or it may cause frustration. As humans, we're designed to expend as little energy as possible and to avoid discomfort. For this reason, anytime there's something that could be perceived as not enjoyable or hard, your brain will try to hold you back from doing it. If we look at negative self-talk, it may seem like there's really no reward for having negative self-talk, but let's think this through. If you talk to yourself negatively, put yourself down, and set low expectations for yourself, you're also protecting yourself from disappointment if something doesn't go well, from the discomfort of pushing yourself to do something that may feel challenging, and it could also protect you from being present and dealing with the present moment. Finally, let's think about a behavior like biting your nails. This can often start as a nervous habit, so the act of biting your nails alleviated focus on something that was causing stress or worry. But over time, even if the stress or worry is no longer actually there, you may still bite your nails because your brain thinks that this behavior is helping you from becoming stressed or worried about something in your present life. I hope this is making sense. So now the question is, what do you do about it? I have a four step process I'm going to walk you through to start to change bad habits that are not supporting you, or serving you. So first, let's identify, what is the bad habit you want to change? And when you do this, you want to be as specific as possible. So instead of saying, biting my nails, be specific about how often this happens, when it happens, and what the result of doing this behavior is. And once you have done that, think about why do you consider this a bad habit? And even if you think this is a really obvious answer, write it out and be as specific as possible about any and all reasons you consider this to be a bad habit. Then, consider how this habit has been reinforced. What are the rewards, the pros, or the benefits of engaging in this habit? They're there. So take time to figure this out since this will help you in changing the habit. This is really the key. If you are 100% clear on how this habit is serving you, or how the emotional side of your brain thinks this habit is serving you, it becomes much easier to change it, or eliminate it. So once you know how the habit is being reinforced, you really have a couple choices. First, you can decide that you'll tolerate the discomfort of not engaging in the habit for a period of time, until it's no longer a habit. When the urge to engage in the habit arises, you can challenge your thinking that is causing you to want to engage in your bad habit and think differently, which will result in different feelings. When you mentally prepare and tolerate to sit in discomfort, it becomes much easier to do. So it's kind of like you just have to ride it out, but you know what you're doing consciously, which allows you to push through it instead of reverting back to the unwanted behavior or habit. The second option, is you can replace the bad habit with something you consider to be more positive. For example, instead of eating sugary cookies and cupcakes, maybe you have a small bowl of fruit instead of biting your nails when anxious, maybe you put on hand cream with a calming scent, or you do something like crochet to keep your hands busy. Doing these strategies will likely not cause a bad habit to change overnight. However, with intention and consistency, it will change because it will no longer be reinforced and the way it was when you started to change it, for example. Eating a bowl of fruit may become more heavily reinforced or rewarded than eating cookies and cupcakes because you will still get some of that sugar you might be craving, but you may also lose weight when you stop eating cookies and cupcakes. You may still get anxious, however, having your nails look nice or having hands that feel good may become more rewarding than the relief you get in the moment from biting your nails. Changing bad habits is 100% possible for everyone. However, it usually requires an individualized approach, since your particular habit and the way it's rewarded or reinforced is unique to you. If you take the time to really consider what you want to change, why you want to change it, how the habit is being reinforced or rewarded, and what you can do to change that reinforcement or reward, you can then make the change you're looking for. So as we do in all my episodes, let's take some action. I really want you to take some action and use this four step process, so I'm going to walk you through it quickly one more time, and you can also find the process in the show notes so you can go check it out there. But first, what is the bad habit you want to change and be specific about what it is when it happens, what it looks. Next, why do you consider a bad habit? And even if it seems obvious, really write it down. Get really clear about why you think this is a bad habit. Then consider how the bad habit is being reinforced, and this is the key to all of it. What's the reward for doing the bad habit? And then once you understand that you know what the reward is and how it's being reinforced, you have a couple choices. You can decide that you're going to tolerate the discomfort of not engaging in a habit for a period of time, or you can replace it with something that you consider to be a more positive habit. If you use this process and you're consistent and you eliminate one of your bad habits, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out on Instagram at Best Boss Lady Life, or you can email me at hello Karen Vincent solutions.com. Oh, and one more thing before we go. If you like reading and want some more tips and strategies that will help you with things like managing your mindset, your stress, your anxiety and worry setting and achieving your goals, managing limiting beliefs, creating healthy success habits, challenging yourself beyond what you believe is currently possible, and lots of other topics related to creating a life of success, ongoing growth, and fulfillment, go to www.karenvincentsolutions.com/blog and check out my blog. That's a wrap. You should be proud of yourself for investing time in you, which is so critical for success and for overall life fulfillment. I look forward to having you join me for my next episode. And in the meantime, go click that subscribe button so you'll know when it's released, and you can also follow me on Instagram at Best Boss Lady Life that's at Best Boss Lady Life on Instagram. Also, remember that whatever it is that you're working on, you've got this and I'm here cheering you on.