How to Break Bad Habits

In This Article, I gave you tips on how to create new good habits but now I want to address what is happening in the brain when habits are formed and broken and how to eliminate those bad habits forever.

The Sleep Game

Occasionally, I have trouble sleeping. The key is to focus my mind on something other than my random thoughts. Our minds are powerful, independent creatures but we can control them with effort, consistency and determination.  This is what I try if I wake in the night and can’t get back to sleep. I pick a topic like countries in the world or girl’s names – anything with a list – then I go through the alphabet and mentally say one country for each letter. So, Austria, Botswana, Canada, Denmark etc. Or I might decide to say two for each letter if the list has many possibilities. When I get stuck and can’t think of one, I try for a bit but then move on. The idea is to engross my mind in what it is doing so those unwanted thoughts don’t dominate. I have been doing this consistently for years, and a pathway in my brain is firmly in place that equates the alphabet game with sleep. This is a clear signal for my body to sleep. I seldom get past D these days.

When you repeat an action over and over again, a new neuro-circuit is formed in the brain, which makes it difficult to break that habit. This is true for good habits as well as for bad habits. And the longer you do the action or think a thought, the stronger the circuit. That’s how a person learns to play tennis, learns a language, learns to dance, learns anything.

Those Tortuous Thoughts

Repetition is the key. So, if you go over and over in your mind the unpleasant conversation that you had with a colleague or partner, you are creating a pathway that will be difficult to break and so you will find yourself thinking about it years later. And I assure you it will pop up on those sleepless nights and torment you. So be very careful what you think about. Those thoughts can become entrenched like weeds in a garden with long roots that you eradicate only with great difficulty. In her eighties, my grandmother’s eyes would fill with tears when the name of her sister, Olive was mentioned. Olive died a mysterious death when she was a teenager and it devastated the family of 14. So much so, that they left their home for a new one far away. The connection in my grandmother’s brain between the name Olive and pain was infinitely strong all her life.

A Happy Paradise in Your Brain

On the contrary, if you spend your time thinking about your long-term dreams and making plans for them, creating a pathway to their fulfillment, that is the pathway that will be formed in your brain, and the possibility of you achieving those dreams will be much higher. Think great, positive thoughts to create a happy paradise in your brain. Think only about what’s important to you and divert your brain from what is not.

Sleep Empties Your Brain

Returning to sleep for a moment, this is when decisions are made about what pathways stay in place and which ones can be eradicated once and for all. There’s a limit to what your brain can retain and that feeling of overwhelm is real. If you are constantly making new neuro-circuits and not breaking down any of the old ones, then space more or less runs out. When you sleep, your brain cleans itself by clearing away up to 60% of the inefficient connections and building other strong connections. However, it doesn’t take into account what is helpful and what is detrimental. It is simply obeying your signals while awake. That’s why you can think more clearly about a problem or create a plan for that project more easily or to learn that speech by heart while there was no way you could have done it the night before.

A 20-minute nap will do the same thing – clear away some of the rubbish and leave you feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the to-do list.

How to Break that Annoying Habit

So, how does the brain decide which pathways to discard? It’s simple – it chooses those that are not being used. To break a habit, you must not do the action for long enough for the pathway to weaken and your brain to decide that the old habit is no longer relevant. If you want to stop biting your nails, stop thinking about that unpleasant fight, stop eating a muffin every morning at 10 am, then dig deep and stop doing it for long enough and it will no longer be a habit.