Habits are not easy to get rid of once it becomes routine. Oh no…. I am not talking about good ones. Why should we get rid of good habits? This is about bad ones. We will talk about good ones in later post and first start with what we want to give up. Because giving up bad things are as important as learning good things. Gautam buddha has rightly said:
If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down.
Buddha
Pursuing bad habits doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. You just need to control a few things and you’re on track. Now, how does a person can come to know what is a bad or good habit? Simply, I love to play video games which is perfectly fine for an hour. But if I play for say 12 hours, then I am killing my body by sitting continuously for 12 hours, not giving time to family or friends or not utilizing that time (I could finish lots of my work or domestic chores during that time). And that’s where self-assessment of daily activities is very important.
I applied a few tips on me so that I can be more productive than just a person who passes time and let me share these tips with you:
Start Slowly but Be Consistent on Your Give Up Goals
Start by making short goals to give up a habit. Say, if you spend too much time watching television, then make goals like “I’ll reduce 20 minutes of watching hours daily.” and this thing will work. For me, I started by deciding on a goal that “I will reduce gameplay by 30 minutes every week”. Now, I hardly play for 1/2 an hour and that too not continuously.
Write Down Your Progress
Make a note in a diary or a journal about your progress on daily basis. For example, if you want to give up drinking too much coffee, note down about the number of cups you consumed every day to ascertain the increase and decrease in intake. Don’t worry if you’re on a higher side on any single day. It may happen to get off track once in a while but it should not happen regularly. Here the concept is to keep track of your progress in a measurable way. If we take the above TV example then you can write down how many hours you watched television daily.
Learn to Reward Your Success
Every time you achieve your goal, reward yourself with something. That doesn’t mean it should be an expensive gift, it may be your favourite food, chocolates, cupcakes, or whatever you like and easily accessible to you. You can even take the support of your family or friends into it.
Create a Productive Environment
When you feel hungry, you can feed your body either a burger or an apple. It’s totally up to you and you know what’s better? Just like the body, minds feel hungry too. Now, it’s up to you whether you want to kill the time or do something which can be productive. So if you have four hours to spare today, whether you want to play games for 4 hours or 1-hour play games + 1-hour exercise + 1 hour cooking your favourite meal (because it can make you happy) + 1 hour any skill development course.
Here is the list of books that can help in becoming more productive.
And last but not least……….
Don’t Give Up on Giving Up
Once you decided to withdraw from any bad habit, don’t let your mind seek reasons to restart it. I can say with guarantee that when you give up habits, you start searching for excuses to again start it. because it’s in routine and routine is not easy to change but trust me, not impossible to change. Just like you brush your teeth every day before having breakfast and you are doing this since your childhood. Thus, it’s a routine. Now, you can’t have breakfast without brushing your teeth at any cost. You feel guilty about it if you do so. So never give up on giving up bad habits.
Do you have a bad habit which you’re struggling to give up? Please let me know in the comment section. I may help you with how to get rid of it.
Also, don’t forget to share, love and like this post. 😀
A Legacy of Bliss 
Loved the article, keep it up.
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Thank you!
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