1. Soft Drinks - Growing up I loved, Loved, LOVED Fanta! After reading very little literature about how bad soft drinks are, I decided to stop drinking them. I stopped January 1, 1995 and that was a great decision. Let me truthful and tell you that the no Soft Drink thing on January 1 is the only resolution that I was ever able to keep. It was challenging at first because everywhere I went there was only soft drinks as a beverage. Once I broke that bad habit cold turkey, I never missed it and I haven't gotten back to it. Seriously, if you ever decide to break this habit, be prepared to carry a bottle of water everywhere so you will have an option.
2. Biting my Nails - It took many years. I will not lie to you and tell you that vanity was my motivation. I come from a culture where natural, long nails is the thing to have and I wanted that thing. Before coming to the realization that pretty nails were what I wanted, I tried all kinds of solutions. I remember painting my nails with that bitter nail polish thing and that didn’t work. Vanity worked though.
3. Comparison - this one took Biblical, spiritual fasting. I remember seeing those cute quotes such as “comparison is the thief of joy” but that didn’t convince me. Going to God with my life as an open slate worked. I told Him He had the freedom to tell me what was wrong so it could be made right. It was tough at first but oh to be on the other side of comparison is to live in the land of equanimity. All glory to God.
4. Added Sugar - I realized many years ago that added sugar is not essential to my diet. I continuously watch out for it without being paranoid about it. I try not to bring a lot of stuff with added sugar home. I also realized that the easiest way to kill anything is to stop feeding it. If I don’t have added sugar I will eventually reeducate my palate.
5. Mindless Browsing - this is the worse of the internet sins my friends! Mindless browsing sucks because it takes away precious time I could be using on productive things. I decided to be purposeful about my time by remembering what my priorities are. For example, in the morning, instead of browsing through social media mindlessly, I don’t touch my phone but I go on to do more important things such as exercise. I have also been known to log off for a while to recalibrate. I believe that social media can and should be done with a purpose and cutting down on mindless browsing is plain smart.
6. Fast Food - 10 years ago I had the habit of eating fast food for dinner several times a week. Education actually broke that bad habit. I learned about the effect my favorite fast food choices had in my body. It was oh so easy to make better choices after that. Education helped me to cut down the bad habit of eating fast food and now I am open to endless possibilities of natural, God created foods.
7. Inactivity - The decision to cut the inactivity habit out of my life came when I was told that my blood pressure was sky high and I needed to do something about it. I took small small steps and now I actually look forward to exercising most days of the week. Breaking this bad habit required a strong reason why I wanted to be active. I want to live, it’s that simple.
• How do you break your bad habits? What are the advantages of breaking bad habits?
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