It’s not easy to break a bad habit. For example, you feel bad and snack to fatty foods, you get anxious because you think about your health so you start smoking to get calmer, … As soon as you notice something, you start wanting it. This process happens all the time, often without you even realizing it.
Just now we gave you the 3 steps to creating a good habit. To break a bad habit, we reverse these 3 steps:
Step 1: Make it invisible
Step 2: Make it unattractive
Step 3: Make it unattractive
We give a more detailed example about the bad habit of “reaching for your cell phone too much while at work”:
Step 1: Make it invisible
Put it in another room
Step 2: Make it difficult
Turn your cell phone off completely or make sure you have to enter a 10 digit code before your cell phone unlocks.
Step 3: Make it unattractive
Require yourself to do a task that you don’t like when you reach for your cell phone, such as responding to emails or download an app like Forest. It plants a seed that becomes a virtual tree after 30 minutes. In this way, you can create a whole virtual forest. Do you still come to your cell phone within these 30 minutes? The plant dies.
The first step “make it invisible” is the most important step to break your bad habit because you are no longer exposed to the signal. We’ll give a few more examples:
You just made the exercise to create a new habit. Now the goal is to break a bad habit, you can use the example above for inspiration. In the workbook, you will find another template for this!
