How to get rid of bad habits: simple advice from a psychologist

Nir Eyal (Nir Eyal)

Psychologist, he taught at Stanford Business School. Author of "Eagle Eye," "Neotvlekaemy".

Once, after my lecture about the formation of habits of a woman in the audience exclaimed, "You learn to create a new habit, but it is not a problem for me. I can not get to stop the bad old habits. Therefore, I still thick. " I very well understand it. I myself used to be a serious obesity, though, looking at me right now, it's hard to believe.

Indeed, to get a new habit and give up the old - are completely different things. No matter what you want to do - to give up or stop harmful food distracted at work.

To form a habit, you need to bring to the automaticity number of new actions. The brain remembers the causal link between the trigger that causes an action, and a certain result. When the trigger is repeated on a regular basis, and the result is repeated.

Let's say you want to take vitamins daily. Put the packaging where it will come across your eyes during the morning duties, such as next to a toothbrush. Then, at the time of your regular procedures you remember and vitamins. And over time, their technique will become automatic. To eradicate the habits you need to use very different mechanisms.

But many misunderstand this difference between the formation of habits and getting rid of them.

Writer Charles Dahigg (Charles Duhigg) shared his experiences in the book "force of habit». For a long time every day he went up on the fourteenth floor of the office building where he worked, and bought cookies (resulting in fatter almost 4 kilograms). He decided to analyze this habit and I realized that the real reward for him was not a cake, but a conversation with colleagues for a meal. He was replaced by eating sweets communication and so get rid of the harmful factor.

Dahigg echoed popular belief, according to which to eliminate bad habits need replace it with some other. I doubt it. Maybe it helped and replacing cookies socializing with colleagues. But if you do the same as I just adore different goodies and years of struggling with being overweight, I can not advise you just to talk a little more, whenever you want sweet.

I was helped by another method, which I call "the method of gradual extremes." It is particularly well suited for those cases where replacing one habit the other does not work. For example, when you need to give up junk food or stop often distracted.

To begin, select a habit from which you want to get rid of.

Let's say, you want to remove from your diet processed sugar. If you try to do it in one fell swoop, you most likely will not work, because the goal is too large. Start with a sweet product that can be excluded from their diet without much difficulty. It is important that this was something for which you will not miss much. It is easier to start a process of change for the better.

For example, I started with a sugar candy in the form of grains of corn, which are popular at Halloween. I have them never particularly liked, so give them up was easy. And to be less distracted, I stopped reading the article in the browser and passed to the application Pocket. The main thing - do not try to immediately change completely, and proceed gradually.

The next step - write it down on paper and mark the date of refusal. It will be a visible reminder of your quest.

Well, then you need to be patient, because changes take time. Every few months through a list of things on which you have refused. I look forward to these things more than you have no control over. And when ready add to the list of new items.

Do not forget: if the obligations seem too heavy, then you really have taken on too much. Each step must be given without a Herculean effort over himself, but to cause pride in what you are permanently renounced something harmful.

This also applies to eating habits, and to excessive use of technologyAnd any other undesirable behavior, which gets in the way to your goals. Just gradually increase the list of what you no longer do - and it will be an investment in the development of your new identity.