Identifying & Changing My Bad Habits

I’ve started to identify my bad habits that affect my life, by analysing my previous recurring mishaps & seeing what personal behaviours I portrayed that may have caused those mishaps. For example, one of the many mishaps that often occurred in my life was losing jobs that I would normally blame the companies for & rarely take responsibility for.

(N.B. A bad habit can be as simple as just the words you say as a reaction to things that happen i.e. ‘I don’t care, I can’t be bothered, I don’t know, its too long, I’m tired, It’s just the way I am’ etc. It goes from you just saying these words to actually becoming those words.).

Hence, I decided to analyse my past behaviour & attitude in those jobs and It made me realise, one major bad habit that affected my work life, was lateness.

I didn’t realise how much it affected my work life because I was used to thinking being a little late ‘is just the way I am’ & because my friends/family tolerated it, I’ll think it’s okay to be a few mins late to work, late off my breaks etc. I remained oblivious to its detrimental effects and started to showcase this bad habit at work places. The long term effect of this bad habit, caused me to lose a lot of jobs but I would be delusional and say: “the company is racist”, “they don’t like me, it was personal”, “I was only a few mins late” etc. when realistically, even if the company didn’t like me, I gave them a reason to fire me by being late often.

(N.B. As you know, there are 100’s of different bad habits. Just got to identify which ones affect your life negatively, by analysing past failures that happen often. Then look at your behaviours & attitudes in how you handled those situations in the past)

After analysing the negative effects of my bad habits, I developed one way of changing them by:

•Looking at the extreme negative pathway of keeping those bad habits I.e. for me, being late leads to: losing jobs, meaning no money, insecurity, unable to fund my dreams, higher debts, low confidence, anger issues, develop more bad habits/negative mindset, increase my anxiety levels of no regular income, lead to depression of being ‘broke’, becoming homeless etc.(slightly extreme but you know what I mean lol).

Now, by thinking this way, it scared me into wanting to change that habit because I saw & experienced a little bit of the pathway of keeping that bad habit of being late.

•Next, I looked at the extreme positive pathway of replacing that bad habit with a positive one I.e. for me, being early: can lead to keeping a job, meaning more money, can clear debts, fund my dreams, financial stability, develop a habit of consistency, reduce anxiety levels, travel regularly, invest in stuff, keep me comfortable & happy, not homeless etc. which is like a chain reaction of positive actions.

Hence, by thinking this way & applying it, I was able to slowly replace my bad habit of being late. In case you can relate to this bad habit, I'm changing it by simply waking up an hour earlier than my normal alarm by attaching a task to do within that hour i.e. ill meditate & watch a motivational video. Then slowly, I started waking up 2 hours earlier and do stuff like go gym, cook & meditate in the am before getting ready for work (P.s took a few weeks to get used to it btw lol). Inevitably, I was now early to work & was on the positive pathway of replacing my bad habit. Most importantly, it enabled me to not just positively impact my work life but also other areas of my life in general.

P.s I still slip up a few times but that comes with the process, just don't stop when you slip up. This example of ‘being late’ is just one of a few bad habits I’m learning to change.

(N.B. This is just one way you can analyse your bad habits and slowly change them.)

Questions I ask myself:

•What’re those bad habits I have that I tell myself “it’s just the way I am”, and I don’t take action to change them?

•Next, I analyse how those bad habits can negatively impact my life?

•Then analyse how replacing those bad habits with a positive one can positively impact my life?

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Follow my journey on Instagram: @Davidologunja