How to Break Bad Habits
There are hundreds of bad habits and hundreds of ways to break them. if you need help, there are books, support groups, and counselors to help you. Mostly you can take a common-sense approach and get the job done.
If bragging is one of your bad habits, you could either be insecure or overly proud. It usually makes the other person feel bad, or they resent you. You can get a handle on this bad habit if you stop for a few seconds before you talk. Give yourself time to think about others and how this will sound to them. Think about whether you are telling it to them, or to yourself.
Another one of these bad habits is name dropping. Again, you may be insecure. Most people will not take it in a friendly way. Try to tell your same stories but without the names to stop yourself from doing this. You might say, “My friend Brad” instead of “my friend Brad Pitt,” or something like that.
Cursing is one of those bad habits that can start at an early age. You may curse so much that you are unaware that you are doing it much of the time. The first thing to do is to pay attention to. Whenever you say inappropriate words, put money in a jar. Even if it is your coffee money, put it in there. Also, you might want to think about anger management classes if your cursing is done in a hostile way.
If you have the bad habit of chewing with your mouth open, there may be a physical cause. It is disgusting at the dinner table and might make you look bad at a dinner meeting. Perhaps all you need is a nasal decongestant. Maybe if you can breathe through your nose, you will close your mouth.
You may be a whiner. This is one of those bad habits that annoy people from the time you are a child until you are old or until you quit it. It comes out in the sound of your voice and the expression on your face. However, it is rooted in a negative, doom and gloom attitude. Look on the positive side of things, and you will find yourself whining less.
Gossips are notorious for starting trouble in any group to which they belong. These people often find their lives so boring that they cannot find anything else to talk about. Their only topic of discussion is other people’s business. These people can break this bad habit by finding new interests to think and therefore talk about.
Nail-biting is a bad habit for people of all ages. It damages the fingertips and nails. It is not very sanitary practice. People do it out of nervousness, and most of them would like to quit. In past times, people would wear gloves, but people do not wear them much anymore. You can buy nail polish that tastes bad, though. That seems to help at times.
You can find a way to overcome any addiction or bad habit. Some of them are trivial in the scheme of things. Others are deadly serious. If you find the right help for your situation, you can stop your bad habits.
