Understand The Habit Loop :-
Cue -> Routine -> Reward -> Cue …
Cue- can be anything like watching specific TV show, Time, Location or it can be your mood.
Routine- is combination of craving and response.
Reward- is the satisfactory chemical released in our brain commonly known as Dopamine, this same chemical is released when you eat sweet things or processed food.
Eliminate The Cue
Firstly identify your cues, like it may be as simple as while watching a particular TV show and then you started to smoke or you started to drink, so to eliminate this cue you must consider to replace the cue by something very casual like in this case we might replace a pack of cigarettes with lollipop, candies or with coke this we gradually eliminate the cue of your previous habit.
Lower Your Stress
Stressed out mind craves for dopamine, studies shown that stressed people tend to make wrong choices/decisions in their life or business. You should practice Delayed Gratification in each area of your life, to decrease your stress level you must consider delayed gratification as it will turn your instant gratification activities into less enjoyable and make you work for long term goals. Your sleep is directly correlated to your productivity. Optimize your sleep by not using any device before 1 hour of bed time, don’t consume caffeine in the evening, get sunlight in morning for vitamin-D and as well as for melatonin. These all steps will help you to decrease your stress levels.
Don’t Focus On Stopping Bad Habits
You should be more focused on replacing those bad habits rather than breaking or stopping them, as it is impossible to forget or completely break the old habit because your once your brain develops the neural pathways of doing a certain task over a period of time then you can’t erase them. This is the biological understanding but in the book written by James Clear, Atomic Habits he mention’s A lady had a habit of smoking a pack of cigarettes while horse ridding but after few years of other work she didn’t smoked cigarettes as she was not doing horse riding, but after few years when she went for horse riding she unconsciously slide her hand into her pocket where she used to keep pack of cigarettes, this study shows us that our habits are sometimes autopiloted by our brain and we can’t resist them but what we can do is to replace them.
Willpower is not enough
Willpower is a reserve/ limited resource, you may have observed that whenever you try to show extra willpower or energy to complete a task, after sometime you will get fatigue. This is common because whenever you use the external force or more energy in this case that is willpower, you will have to take rest to recharge it and this leads to inconsistency, which again increase the chance of you starting that old habit again. So rather than applying any willpower you must not resist yourself and make your environment so clear that you don’t have to restrain yourself from that habit.
Question Behaviour Effect
Whenever you do any habit it may be good or bad, doesn’t matter you just have to ask yourself a binary question of yes or no. suppose you are going to gym then you must ask yourself that am I really going to gym? or assume that you are distracted and you were about to smoke but before that ask yourself, am I going to smoke?.
This Behavioural Technique will help you to stay in the alert state that what are you about to do, whether it’s bad or good for me. And binary question makes it simple to answer and not to think a lot but to sub-consciously rethink over it.