Type in the term “bad habits” into Google and you’ll get pages and pages of articles teaching you how to break those bad habits. While it sounds like a great idea to get rid of your bad habits, it’s creating a rather unhealthy attitude around what people consider to be good and bad habits. It’s getting to a point where it’s starting to affect our mental health, especially if we find it hard to break off from a certain habit of ours.
But there might be a different approach to these kinds of problems. Instead of thinking too much about your bad habits, embracing and learning to control them might be a much better alternative that is overall healthier for both the body and mind.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/d20v54DIm80 (CC0)
Failing to break a bad habit sucks and makes you feel like you’ve wasted time
One of the biggest problems with trying to break a bad habit such as smoking or drinking is that it makes you feel awful when you try and fail for the 10th time. It’s much better to try and fail than to never try at all, but given that there are entire industries built around helping people get off these products, it can end up being extremely expensive, time-consuming, and perhaps worse off for your health than if you just continued your bad habits in moderation.
As such, you should always try to break off a bad habit. However, you should start by controlling it and lowering the frequency that you rely on it instead of just outright trying to remove it from your life. Going cold turkey never works, but gradually shifting it out of your life (if you choose to) can do wonders.
There are ways to control your habits if you just embrace that it’s a part of who you are
There are certainly ways to control your bad habits if you’re willing to accept them as part of who you are.
A great example of this is smoking. You could try to avoid smoking by not buying any cigarettes or carrying anything with you, but it’s just going to end up giving you withdrawal symptoms. A great solution to this is to buy yourself a premium joint case. This allows you to store a certain number of cigarettes or joints, then you can consider that your daily limit.
People aren’t perfect and we should never feel forced into another person’s ideals
There’s this stigma against people that drink, smoke, or even engage in other perceived “bad” habits. The thing is, people aren’t perfect. Everyone has their vice and people need something to help blow off steam, relax, or unwind. Some people rely on video games, other people might smoke. Some people drink a bit too much, others engage in stress eating.
Embracing these bad habits as part of who we are can actually help us overcome them. Instead of just avoiding them outright, it’s a good idea to accept that we have these issues, understand why we engage in them, then slowly work out how we can control those urges and reduce the chances of it happening in the future.
Thank you for reading!
