I've found a Youtube video about breaking bad habits. It describes a method I've never used, but that I might try sometime. I'll go over what's worked for me, so you can know about that. Then you can watch the video. Use whatever technique you want to, or you could try both. Here's how I've always one it: When you have a bad habit like drinking soda pop, smoking, or wasting time on social media, your behavior is controlling you rather than the reverse. These steps are what I've found works: 1. Don't beat yourself up over it. This may seem counterintuitive, but berating yourself doesn't change your behavior. You can't usually brow-beat yourself into changing. 2. Instead of bashing yourself, ask yourself, “What's not working yet?” This is an empowering question. It assumes that you're going to make things better. When I asked myself some time back that question, the answer was, “I keep drinking this soda junk that is trashing my health.” 3. Ask yourself, “What goals am I willing to set to fix this?” My answer was, “I could drink other things instead like unsweet tea, sparkling water, and regular water.” 4. Now set goals to accomplish that. I know that effective goal setting involves not just setting one overall goal, but in setting tiny goals to support it. I therefore set a goal to go for one day without soda, and I bought some cans of sparkling water, and I made a pitcher of unsweet black tea that I had on-hand. The next mini goal was to go for a week without it, and then the next was to go a month. 5. Leverage the power of “why”. This is an important one, and you could do it before step 4 if you want to. I asked myself, “Why do I want this change?” My answer was, “My health sucks. I'm overweight, prediabetic, and I keep running out of energy.” Write down your own responses. I wrote mine down in my journal. You should write yours down somewhere, in a journal or in your phone or on a piece of paper that you hang up. So any time I felt any temptation to drink a soda, I would read over my “why” statement, and it filled me full of emotion to stop the bad habit and to keep on my goal to fix it. Every step is important, but #5 is especially so. People don't break bad habits because they're emotionally tied to them. When I was feeling out of energy, the soda with all that caffeine and sugar was giving me a lift. Your answer to “why” gives you emotion to counter reward that the bad habit gives you. Then there's further positive emotion as you succeed in your mini goal. This works because it taps into emotion to help you break the habit. You can't beat a bad habit with logic alone. Logic, of course, told me that drinking soda was bad, but that logic doesn't defeat the emotions. You must create strong emotions to counteract it. I was feeling pissed off that my energy level kept tanking every day, and when I thought about maybe developing diabetes, that thought was scary. I also hated the extra weight. I was like, “Fuck no, I don't want that.” It gave me emotional leverage. Then as I checked off the boxes of fulfilling the mini-goals, that created a positive feeling of accomplishment. In my goals journal, I literally had check boxes by each mini goal. It felt good to check each one off, knowing I was on my way. That's how I do it. It works for me, and I know for a fact that it's worked for others. However, it's not the only way. In this Youtube video, a gentleman describes how monks break bad habits. I've never done it that way, but I can see how it could be effective. You'll notice in my method (which I did not create, btw; I got it from others), that I interrupted the pattern of the habit. The monks use a different method, but there is also a way of breaking the pattern. So check it out. Next time you need to break a bad habit, you'll have two methods to choose from. TigPlaze communities.win