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Bad habits interrupt your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. They jeopardize your health — both mentally and physically. And they waste your time and energy. We all have a bad habit or two we could stand to lose, but habits are hard to break. Whether your bad habit is procrastinating, overspending, swearing, or any other one you want to change. But habits are also patterns of behaviour and it is the breaking of patterns that are the key to breaking the habits themselves. Usually there is a clear trigger to starts the pattern. Sometimes the triggers are emotional — the wanting a drink or cigarette or nail-biting driven by stress. Other times the trigger is more simply situational and environmental: You see the TV and couch as soon as you hit the front door, and now your brain connects the dots, and eating dinner in front of the TV on the couch is not far behind. More often it is a combination of both — the mix of social anxiety and the party environment leads to your heavier drinking. Overall these auto-pilot habit / routine behaviours are evolutionary-wise and practically a good thing; They keep us from having to re-invent the wheel of our daily lives by making an infinite numbers of decisions all day long, which in turn, provide us with more brain-space to think about more important and creative things. The downside of these routines comes when those patterns land more in the bad-column than the good. Talking about breaking these habits is a good thing but doing the same is a tough task.

Some ways of breaking the cycle are:

1. Fine yourself for each offense: Make a bad habit a little more painful and you might ditch it for good. Money is a great motivator, so you can use the "swear jar" method each time they catch you doing that thing you want to stop doing. It works the other way too: Reward yourself for beating your habit every day.
2. Identify the triggers: By identifying your triggers, you have a way of pushing back and not having that auto-pilot kick in. But some people have a difficult time doing this. If this is true for you, that you have a difficult time knowing what emotionally triggers you, you can work backwards — notice, for example, when you are craving a drink or biting your nails, and slow down and use your awareness of these behaviours as signals to ask yourself: What emotionally is going on?
3. Use prompts: These are reminders to help you break the pattern by creating positive triggers and alerts to keep you on track: Putting your running shoes at the side of your bed so you see them first thing in the morning, or putting an alert on your phone to leave for the gym, or check-in with yourself and gauge your stress level on the way home before it gets too high and out of your control.
4. Get a support system: Tell your friends or your family about the habit you’re trying to break free of. This will make them be vigilant of you and allow them to interrupt you at the times you’re leaning towards your activity.

Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, but mostly it takes perseverance. Most people who end up breaking their bad habits try and fail multiple times before they make it work. You might not have success right away, but that doesn't mean you can't have it at all.