How to Break a Bad Habit: 6 Simple Steps

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Humans are creatures of habit; it seems like how we were designed to behave. Unfortunately, we have a small design flaw. We are able to create a habit that is fundamentally bad for us, and we are rewarded to keep doing it. Of course, we have all the power within us to break these bad habits with a few simple strategies.

How Bad Habits are Formed

In order to break a bad habit, having knowledge on how habits form can be quite useful. It is generally accepted that habits are formed in a 3-phase system. This system is known as ‘Cue-Routine-Reward’ and it is what causes us to have automatic responses to certain stimuli. The example I will use to explain this concept is: Waiting in line.

Phase 1: Cue

A trigger or signal that your brain associates with a specific habit that must be executed when this trigger is detected. For the ‘waiting in line’ example, the cue could be a sense of boredom.

Phase 2: Routine

When you actually execute the habit, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. For the ‘waiting in line’ example, the routine could be pulling out your phone and opening Instagram.

Phase 3: Reward

The prize for carrying out the habit. This is usually in the form of a dopamine rush so that your brain remembers it for the future. For the ‘waiting in line’ example, the reward could be the rapid-fire novelty and addictive scrolling that Instagram provides

How to Break a Bad Habit

Now that we know how a habit is formed, we can use the ‘Cue-Routine-Reward’ system to actually break the habit. Here are the 6 vital strategies for breaking a bad habit.

Eliminate Triggers

If you get rid of the ‘Cue’ part of the ‘Cue-Routine-Reward’ system, the rest of the system will become more difficult to execute. Let’s go back to the ‘waiting in line’ example to help demonstrate this first strategy. If you tend to pull out your phone when you feel bored, don’t take your phone with you when you go out. The bad habit of resorting to an instant dopamine hit won’t be possible if you don’t have your phone on you.

This is why your environment plays such a crucial role in forming good habits and breaking bad ones. If you get rid of the external triggers that cause you to execute a bad habit, you will find that you won’t repeat that bad habit nearly as often.

Create Accountability

An accountability partner is one of the best tools you can use to break a bad habit. An accountability partner makes the ‘Routine’ part of the ‘Cue-Routine-Reward’ system feel unpleasant during a bad habit. If the ‘Routine’ feels unpleasant, the ‘Reward’ may also not feel as good, making it less likely for you to repeat the habit.

When both partners do well, then you both reward yourselves too! It’s a win-win for each of you. This actually forms an entirely new habit. Let’s use smoking as an example of the new habit that is formed due to an accountability partner:

Cue: You feel the urge to smoke

Routine: You decide not to smoke, because last time you didn’t smoke, you felt rewarded by your partner

Reward: You are rewarded again, and you reward your partner as well

This can quickly develop a self-perpetuating system for both partners. If you’re trying to break a bad habit and nobody else has the same bad habit, just tell someone that you’re trying to break the habit anyways.

Going back to the smoking example, if your accountability partner (that is not a smoker, but you told them you’re quitting anyway) sees that you have cigarettes in your car, they are going to ask you about it. You made a commitment, and they are going to try to make sure you stick to it.

An accountability partner is one of the best assets you can have when it comes to breaking a habit. Try your best to find one.

Build an Identity

Another thing that makes the ‘Routine’ feel unsatisfying is building an identity. What do I mean by ‘Build an Identity’? Basically, imagine the person you will be after you break the habit. Think about all of the problems that will be resolved after this habit is no longer in your life. Now, become that person.

What I mean by that is this: When someone that doesn’t smoke is offered a cigarette, they say, “No thank you, I don’t smoke”. They do not say, “I can’t, I’m trying to quit,” If you are trying to break a bad habit, become the person that you want to be at the end result.

Another way people phrase this is “Fake it ‘til you make it”, but I think that misguides people. You are not faking it; You have already made it. You’re not putting up a façade when you say “No thank you, I don’t smoke” when you decided to quit yesterday. You are no longer a smoker. You’re not trying to quit; You already have quit.

Be the type of person you want to be today, not tomorrow.

Think Positively

It is quite easy in the early stages of breaking a bad habit to beat yourself up. People often say things like “I’m overweight” or “I waste too much time online” as blanket statements of themselves. This is fundamentally not true. Sure, you may be overweight or waste too much time online, but you’re doing something about it.

This is exactly what you must acknowledge when you notice negative self-talk. While negative self-talk is not always bad (it could be why you decided to change an unhealthy habit in the first place), too much negativity can make you depressed and demotivated.

Instead of simply saying “I’m overweight”, say “I’m overweight, but I am eating much better than I used to and I’m going to the gym at least twice per week!”. Instead of saying “I waste too much time online”, say “I waste too much time online, but I just installed a phone usage tracker and I no longer take my phone with me when I leave the house” (if you do struggle with phone addiction, we wrote an article on it. You can read it here).

Simply adding the word ‘but’ can change negative self-talk into self-encouragement! When you notice that you are talking down on yourself, use the word ‘but’.

Forgive Mistakes

At some point, you will probably slip up. Like the last point, it is important to encourage ourselves and not to beat ourselves up about it. Quoting the writer and athlete, Steve Kamb, “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.”

Mentally prepare for making a mistake. Don’t expect it, but if it happens, don’t talk down on yourself. Instead of wasting time beating yourself up about messing up, quickly pick yourself up and get back on track.

If you can, learn from your mistakes. Maybe there was a cue for your bad habit that you didn’t know you had. Now, you can eliminate that cue and staying on track might be a lot easier!

Substitute It

Instead of cutting out a habit completely, consider replacing it! If you instinctively reach for a chocolate snack on your desk at work, replace it with a healthy snack instead. In order to make sure you still feel the ‘Reward’ phase of “Cue-Routine-Reward”, make sure you actually enjoy the healthy snack as well.

A habit substitute gives the ‘Routine’ of a bad habit a new role as well! If you feel a hunger pang, instead of eating a piece of chocolate, you can still get some sort of familiarity with the old habit when you just eat a healthy snack. A substitute allows you to plan ahead before a slip-up, so have a substitute available whenever the craving for the old habit gets to be a little too much.

Conclusion

Breaking a bad habit is not impossible, but it can be very difficult. Changing your normal behaviour is never easy; humans are creatures of habit. But these 6 strategies make breaking an unhealthy habit a lot more streamlined and easier to follow than just ‘going cold turkey’. If you have an unhealthy habit that you need to break, refer back to this article and implement these 6 vital strategies to break a bad habit.