How to change habits first starts with desire. You have to want to change to improve your life and move up in the world. The ones who are stuck in their ways and never learn anything new won’t move up in life. They’ll be pigeonholed to where they are.
Good habits should never be changed. Bad habits should always be changed. Whether we like to admit it or not, we are not perfect. There are many habits of mine that I would love to change. One such habit I would like to change is to sleep at consistent times.
I always sleep at 1am or 12pm or anything else watching YouTube videos. Another habit that I need to change is my soft drink consumption. There are many habits that I need to change. However, the most proud habit that I changed is my sobriety to alcohol.
Ever since I experienced a bad day celebrating my last day at my prior employer, I gave up alcohol for good. In 2022, I haven’t drank a single ounce of alcohol and I’m proud of it. Sleep has never been better and I don’t have any groggy days at all whatsoever now, as long as I get quality sleep.
Knowing how to change habits is important because companies bombard us with endless temptations to spend our money on. Some have issues with alcohol, some have issues with shopping sporadically. Whatever the issues are, there’s a way to better your life and resist temptation.
Everyone struggles at some point.
How to Change Habits to Improve Your Life
Below are the 9 ways on knowing how to change habits so your life can be better in 1 year from today. Our habits shape and make us who we are as a person.
1) How to Change Habits Starts with Desire
You can’t fix the problem if you can’t identify the problem. You have to want to change habits before even knowing how to change habits in the first place. For me, I wanted to quit drinking alcohol when I felt the lowest I’ve ever felt the day after I drank.
The hangover didn’t even end there. It lasted throughout the day after as well. And the day after. That’s when I felt a deep desire to change my life. That’s when I didn’t want to drink any more alcohol in my life ever again. I didn’t just lose a day’s worth of productivity and clear thinking.
I lost two day’s worth of productivity and even on the 3rd day, I still felt out of sorts. Therefore, I made a promise to myself to never drink alcohol ever again for the rest of my life, even for special occasions. And I’m on track to meet that promise.
I don’t regret it for a second and the benefits I realized from not drinking alcohol far outweighed anything I gained from drinking.
2) Write Down a Plan on How to Change Habits
Concretely write it down. Don’t just put it in your head on how to change habits. Actually and physically write it down. There’s actual a real neuroscience connection between physically grabbing a pen and paper and writing down your goals and actually achieving your goals.
It makes you feel more responsible for accomplishing your goals. You didn’t just make a promise to someone in your head, you’re actually making a promise to yourself. That’s how to change habits. Making a pact with yourself so that you don’t cheat.
We don’t care about letting others down but we sure care about letting ourselves down. It’s one of those times when It’s the little things that matter the most. After you write it down, you can quarterly review your goals to see if you’re on track and are meeting it.
Your habits make up who you are. If you want to get rich, you might want to get rid of bad spending habits to get there.
3) Start Slowly and Get Used to It
Quitting cold turkey doesn’t work unless you’ve already tried the slow and steady route and have the slow progress frustration. At a certain point, you get tired of patience and have a burning desire to stop. That was how I felt when I quit alcohol for good in December 2021.
How to change habits means you have to try the slow and steady method first. Then, you will get absolutely frustrated with the lack of progress you are feeling year after year. When I was addicted to computer games, particularly Starcraft, after 8 years, I decided enough was enough.
I was tired of trying to quit year after year and finally stopped in my senior year of high school. Your brain forms habits because it’s comfortable. The habits give us dopamine to work off from. Therefore, we don’t mind continuing the habits to make our brains and ourselves happy, even if it’s fake.
Our brain is too used to that dopamine, which is why cold turkey usually doesn’t work. It’s better to slowly and surely change habits.
4) Be Patient
One day, you will be so frustrated enough of relapsing often that you’ll want to quit on your own. It’s one thing to stop because everyone else in the world is telling you to stop. It’s another to stop because you have a burning desire to stop. How to change habits starts with desire, first and foremost.
You can’t expect to quit a 10 year habit in a single day. It may even take another 10 years to completely stop and get back to your sober self. Society does not value sobriety but sobriety is amazing. When you don’t add any externalities to your body, everything falls into place.
There’s a reason why we’re naturally born without having additional substance or a dopamine imbalance in our bodies. It’s what brings us to our best state of mind. All of the other human made substances and games are there to exploit our senses for their own benefit.
Something we should actively seek out to avoid.
5) Remind Yourself What You’re Losing with Your Current Habit
You want to know how to change habits because you are losing something. For me, I was losing productivity. I have a burning desire to be a millionaire and alcohol and video games was getting in the way of that. Humans are very good at creating products to exploit our senses for their own benefit.
You may even be losing your family and your entire future if you don’t give up your current habit. Is that alcohol consumption really worth losing your spouse and kids over? The judge is not going to be kind to alcoholics when it comes to gaining custody.
You want to change your habits because you are losing by continuing to go down your current path. And you’re not losing something inconsequential. You are losing something of value like your time, money, and life.
Those are things that you can’t get easily get back. It’s time for a change.
6) Appreciate the Benefits of Quitting
When I stopped drinking alcohol, I felt the immediate benefits of quitting. I loved how sharp my mind felt when I went about my day to day life. I loved how I didn’t have to think twice about what I have to say. It’s something I love to feel on a day to day basis. Hopefully permanently.
The benefits of quitting your current habits are enormous. You may not notice it tomorrow or even a week after, but the permanent benefits to quitting is great. Your body will thank you when you figure out how to change habits. If you have a sugar and soft drink addiction, your liver recovers by itself over time.
Your liver may never be at 100%, but it will recover by itself over time as long as you take care of it. Even heavy smokers recover their lungs over time as well. Our bodies have a great way of rejuvenating and recovering from the bad things we put inside it.
The benefits that come with recovery are phenomenal and not to be ignored.
7) How to Change Habits Means Not Obsessing Over Results
You can’t be overly enthusiastic about them. Otherwise, your emotions are running so high that you have a high chance of losing the streak. Our bodies have a wonderful way of getting us back into homeostasis. A way of getting us back to feeling normal.
If you feel ecstatic about good results, your body seeks ways for you to be disappointed so you go back to a normal state. It’s a good win but you’ll have to remain calm throughout the process. That’s when it’s time to look for the next win and the next win, and so forth.
This is how you think big to win big in life. It’s when you control your emotions and not be overly happy about one month’s worth of data. You have to be happy over a year’s worth of data. You can’t let your emotions work against you.
It’s all about going onto the next day and the next day afterwards.
8) Cut Out Friends, if Need Be
There are friends who are such bad influences in your life that you have to cut them out of your life. They are heavy drinks so they want you to be a heavy drinker as well. How to change habits means changing your surroundings to where you want to change to.
You have to take a hard look at yourself and make the hard decisions. Yes, there will be pushback from your friends but you have to cut them out, if necessary. Heck, even cutting out family members is a good thing if they’re toxic. It’s nothing personal, you’re just taking steps to better your life.
If you hang out with 4 alcoholics, you will be the fifth one. People highly dislike the ones who are different than they are. Therefore, when you’re the odd one out, they will attempt to peer pressure you to cave. That’s not a good group of people to hang out with.
You’re taking the steps to better your life.
9) Avoid Getting Burned Out
Look at your life over the long haul. You can’t expect to change your habits starting tomorrow. No matter how motivated you are. How to change habits takes months, years, and sometimes even decades. You don’t want to get burned out by having outlandish expectations from the get go.
Go at your own pace and take it day by day. Showing up is half the battle. It doesn’t matter if you relapse here and there throughout the years but as long as you’re making progress, everything is good. You can’t expect to be perfect on your first try.
You need to take it day by day and make progress that’s good for you. Not good for anybody else. There’s no need to compare yourself to another person’s journey. Their story is not your story. You are creating your own life story with the choices that you’re making.
Changing habits is a long term game.
Knowing How to Change Habits Improves Your Life
The first step to implementing change starts with knowing how to change habits in the first place. As someone who used to sleep in, get bad sleep, and play video games all day, let me tell you. Changing habits is more than possible. Even if it seems like a mountain to climb.
Every mountain climb takes a step by step approach to get to the top. It’s not going to happen today or tomorrow but eventually you will get there. As long as you put in the effort and discipline in, it’s going to be a good life. You don’t want to be another statistic.
You want achieve meaningful things with their life. It’s what you do with the gift of life that matters the most. Your goals and motivations that you’re trying to fulfill and achieve can be done as long as you have the determination to do so.
Your desire for success has to be greater than your fear of failure. You already made it this far in life, what are the chances that this will be the last chapter of your story? Very little. You are in sole control of your paintbrush that you can use to craft the blank canvas in front of you.
How to change habits starts with you and you are more than capable in order to do so. I’m currently still fighting my bad habits, beyond the alcohol and beyond the computer games. You’re not going through the journey alone.
There are millions of others out there who wants to break their bad habits as well. We’ll get through it together.
How to Change Habits: 9 Shortlist Ways
- How to change habits starts with desire
- Write down a plan on how to change habits
- Start slowly and get used to it
- Be patient
- Remind yourself what you’re losing with your current habit
- Appreciate the benefits of quitting
- How to change habits means not obsessing over results
- Cut out friends, if need be
- Avoid getting burned out
