Science says: this is how you say goodbye to your bad habits for good

Be honest: your New Year's resolutions probably fell through by mid-February, you never worked off those winter pounds, and those three healthy meals you were supposed to prep each day? Never happened. Although it is scientifically proven that 8 out of 10 people fail to stick to resolutions or a healthy lifestyle changes to maintain, it is still a major bummer to see that list you made a few months ago with good intentions fail right before your eyes. Fortunately, science has an answer for everything and is happy to lend you a hand to permanently say goodbye to your bad habits, so you can achieve your carefully set goals this time with flying colors.

Give your willpower a boost
Achieving your goals starts with willpower and self-control. In short: train the ability to resist short-term temptations to achieve long-term goals. For many people (I am definitely one of them), a lack of willpower is an excuse to give up. A trainer I stopped going back to because I felt he pushed me too hard, (which is exactly the point of training, but okay), once told me that people are way too nice to themselves and therefore often fail to reach their goals. View willpower as a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. The real diehards among us see willpower as an infinite resource, from which you can draw as much as you want. If you believe that there is no limit to willpower, then there isn't, and you can achieve anything you want. So, it's really just a mental challenge.

Dive into your bad habit
Psychiatrist and addiction expert Judson Brewer says that by becoming very aware of what you do and why you do it, you can break the existing spiral that maintains a bad habit. The part of our brain that understands why we shouldn't fall back on a bad habit like smoking is the same part of the brain that doesn't work well when we are stressed, says Brewer. By digging into the experience of our bad habits, we understand more quickly why they are bad for us and will become less interested in acting on them. This way, we step out of our old cycle of bad habits more quickly and can look at the situation more calmly. Be curious about what happens in your body and mind at the moment you want to engage in a bad habit and try to flip the scenario by viewing it relaxed. How would it feel if you made a different choice?

Say ‘I am not doing this’ instead of ‘I may not do this’
Research at the University of Houston shows that how you talk to yourself and others makes a big difference in how well you can stick to your resolutions. Saying that you are not doing something gives strength, suggests that you are making the decision yourself, and will make you more successful in resisting temptation in the long run. By saying that you may not do something, you greatly limit yourself and it only becomes more attractive to give in to your bad habit.

Source: |Image: Emily in Paris, Netflix