Breaking Bad Habits In The New Year!
- Job Manikkam
- Feb 17, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 22, 2025
How Important Are Habits
As we entered into the new year there were many celebrations from fireworks on the sky to social media buzzing with “happy new year” statements. It’s a great joy to be able to walk into another new year filled with optimism for the future.
I always remind myself that my best days are still ahead of me as a way to stay optimistic about the future. I encourage you to do the same because the thought about a bleak future wont do you any good especially with economical uncertainty and the adoption of AI into the workforce.
As I was reflecting what I should be writting for the new year. The thought came to me about writing on habits. Much of life is based on habits, some are good habits and some are not so good habits and to be successful, we need to have the right habits in our life.
In this article, I aim to share about how habits are formed and how we can break some habits that are not beneficial for us. A study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology (2010) titled “How Habits Are Formed: Modeling Habit Formation In The Real World”, says that 40% of peoples daily activities are habitual.
40% is a lot, that means we are on autopilot for much of the activity that we are performing on a daily basis. How much of them are beneficial for you and not beneficial for you? You need to evaluate this in this new year so that you become aware of what are the habits that you need to be changing this year.
What is a habit?
In his book Charles Duhigg titled the “The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business” he talks about how habits are formed through a cycle of cue, routine and reward. A cue is simply a trigger, it could be a place, a situation, emotion, a time of the day and so on. The trigger motivates you towards a particular behavior.
Routine is what you do after the trigger, this is the actual behaviour, it could be checking your phone, eating a snack and so on. In the early stages it happens consciously and as time goes on, it becomes unconscious whereby when you experience the cue, it goes into automatic mode.
Finally, the reward is where you feel the pleasure from that behavior, whether eating junk food, smoking, checking your phone and so on. Habits are deeply connected with pleasure, the more pleasure we receive from that habit, the stronger it becomes.
As an example, Sharon was feeling tensed at office on a particular day. Whenever Sharon feels tensed, she wants to eat chocolates because for Sharon, she likes eating chocolates and it also helps her to relax and stay calm. It’s become a habit for Sharon that so much so that it had caused her to gain weight in a very short period of time.
So looking at Sharon, we find that the cue was her emotions, the tense feeling she experiences motivates her to eat chocolates because Sharon likes chocolates and she wants to eat them whenever she is feeling tensed and by doing so, she experiences the pleasure of sugar and coco which thereby helps her to relax and calms her mood.
Sharon, needs to pay attention to how she is regulating her emotions by eating chocolates if she wants to reduce her weight. Sometimes we might feel powerless when it comes to habit because they can become very strong and hard to break. It takes a lot of effort and the right support to break off habits that are not healthy for us.
Breaking Bad Habits
I believe the key in breaking bad habits is that, first you need to become aware of them. Write down a list of habits that you want to change and spend some time on it. It could be from over-checking your phone, procrastination, eating unhealthy food and so on.
Secondly understand what triggers it, is it emotions, time, location, people, what is it? You need to spend a bit of time understanding yourself and understanding your triggers. Evaluate your environment, the people you associate with, how often are you influenced by your moods swings and so on. Why do you do, what you do?
Thirdly, write down what is the behavior that is associated with the trigger, and write down what pleasure you gain by doing that behavior. What is it that you get evertime you eat that junk food? What is it that you get, everytime you procrastinate? What is it that you get when you over check your phone?
Finally, you need to write down what positive behavior can you replace to get the same pleasure. If it’s sugar rush, can you have a more healthier option? Maybe a snack bar? Maybe nuts? If it’s stress, can you go for a walk? If you are not feeling up to it, a cup of herbal tea? Or it could even be talking to a friend on the phone when you are stressed?
The more time you spend on this, the better you will know yourself and you will gain insight on how develop positive habits in your life. Remember, it's not a one day marathon run when it comes to habits but rather it is something you need to continuously evaluate and develop yourself in.
From the example in the paragraphs above, Sharon, could be replacing eating chocolates with a healthy snack bar that has less fats and calories or she could even replace it by eating a fruit that she really likes. Fruits are also sweet which can help Sharon to get the pleasure of sugar. Sharon needs to do this consistently so that new habits become stronger.
It is said that by the previous study that was highlighted “How Habits Are Formed” that it takes on average 66 days to form a new habit. So that means that if you pick up a new habit and if you are consistent with it for at least 66 days, the chances of the new habit becoming stronger is much higher.
So I encourage you to start on this journey of personal self development in terms of your habits!
Make A List Of Habits
As an action plan, I encourage you to make a list today. Talk to a friend that you trust that can help you to be accountable to in terms of developing a positive habit. Every week, evaluate yourself in terms of how the new habit is going for you, is it working or not working and what you can do to improve it. The goal is for you to be aware of your habits and make changes where necessary.
You can follow me on my Linkedn www.linkedin.com/in/jobthecoach
References
Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House, 2012.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). “How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World.” European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
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