As some know, it’s easier to form a good habit than to break a bad one.To help us do this, a Canadian psychologist reveals four scientifically proven reflexes to adopt.
According to the dictionary, a habit is “a persistent, frequent, regular, or expected way of acting, feeling, or behaving, acquired voluntarily or involuntarily.” When this habit is beneficial to you, like going to the gym regularly, we are the first to congratulate ourselves. The story is more difficult when the obsession is bad and you have to get rid of it. The approach to success is often the same. We start by identifying the negative effects of the obsession on our lives, then we choose to replace it with a healthier one, with the goal of achieving often unattainable goals. Except that. “This approach may work, but only in the short term, in situations where we have enough energy and capacity to control the behavior in question,” warns Canadian psychologist Arash Emamzadeh in an article published Friday, Nov. 8. Psychology today and written by him. It can actually fail whenever we feel unmotivated, stressed, tired or distracted, which happens often. There are other methods to achieve this, the expert assures. The latter offers four specific solutions, drawn from a study by researcher Wendy Woody published last June Current direction in psychological science .
Find your own new habit
When you want to give up a habit in order to learn more healthily, you must first start from the principle that it does not work every time, argues psychologist Arash Emamzadeh. As a result, you should not only try again, but also experiment with other solutions to this bad habit. playing with a ring on a finger, a pen or even pressing a ball against the nails. Stress in your hand,” imagines the specialist.
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Reward yourself
When you strive to change your behavior, you also need to reward yourself for the right attitude. After you’ve made your whole house shine, don’t just look at it with pride, pay for yourself, he urges. Depending on one’s tastes, this can range from watching a favorite TV series to calling a close friend or even buying a comforting hot drink connect this task with something fun and pleasant and strengthen the habit,” says Arash Emamzadeh.
Act on the environment
When you want to stop sugar, nail biting, or other self-harming behaviors, it’s clear that the environment can either help you or make you want to go back. So, it is better to put all the possibilities on your side. “Change everything that can prevent a bad habit and accept everything that can contribute to a good one. So if you want to quit smoking, it will be wise Avoid other smokers around you for a while. Or, if you want to do more sports every day, put all the possibilities on your side by extending your walk between home and work. It’s important to look for such opportunities or create it yourself,” the psychologist sums up.
Add a restriction
If it is accepted that we should reduce the restrictions when we want to adopt healthy behavior, then the opposite is also true. Psychologist Arash Emamzadeh observed the benefits of this meditation on patients who came to see him to change their eating habits the simple fact of moving gave him the opportunity to adopt a diet, but also to lose weight,” he testifies. The expert also cites the example of a mother who made cookies and treats more difficult to access in her kitchen to limit her little boy’s snacking, out of sight, out of temptation.
Source: Le Figaro
