Want to Stop Bad Habits? 17 Tips to Break a Bad Habit

The Only Techniques That Tell You How to Stop Bad Habits
If you’re thinking about ways to stop bad habits, keep reading!
Very often, we convince ourselves that great success requires enormous steps. We think that we need to make the groundbreaking changes that everyone’s talking about.
At the same time, a 1% improvement isn’t very significant—sometimes it’s not even noticeable—but it can be much more important, especially in the long run.
The progress that small changes can bring over time is enormous. There’s simple math behind it: if you improve by one percent every day for a year, you’ll be 37 times better by the end of the year.
We often don’t bother making small changes because they don’t seem to matter much at the moment.
If you save some money, you’re still not a millionaire. If you go to the gym for three days in a row, you’re still not in much better shape. We make some changes, but the results are not tangible, so we return to our old habits.
It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are at the moment. What matters is whether your habits are leading you to success.
You should pay more attention to your current trajectory than to your current results. If you are a millionaire but you spend more each month than you earn, you’re on a bad trajectory.
On the other hand, if you’re broke right now but you’re saving a little money each month, you’re on your way to financial freedom, even if you’re moving slower than you’d like.

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We often assume that progress is linear. We hope that progress will come soon. In reality, the results of our efforts will become apparent after some time.
Therefore, we may feel frustrated and powerless because weeks or months of hard work don’t show any results.
Only after a while will the true value of past efforts become apparent. This is one of the main reasons why it’s so difficult to adopt lasting habits. You make some small changes, don’t see tangible results, and decide to give up.
A few weeks ago, I was googling “How do I stop bad habits?” and came across THIS BOOK which consisted of so many useful tips.
So, I decided to come up with a post that tells you the secrets I gathered from there that will help you stop bad habits. Without further ado, let’s talk about all the steps you can take to break a bad habit.
You might also like: 50 Daily Habits to Transform Your Life for the Better
Let’s Talk About Breaking Bad Habits
1. Evaluate Yourself
How do you break bad habits? Start by deciding who you want to be—in every way: as a person, as part of a team, in your community, and even as a nation.
What do you want to represent? What are your values and principles? Who do you want to become?
These are big questions, and many people don’t know how to answer them at first. But they usually know what results they want—like building strong muscles, being more confident, or earning more money.
That’s a great starting point! From there, think about the kind of person who could achieve those results.
Ask yourself: “Who is the person that could reach this goal?” For example, if your goal is to write a book, think about the traits of someone who writes books. That person is probably consistent and reliable.
Now your focus shifts. Instead of just trying to write a book (focused on the result), you start working on becoming a consistent and trustworthy person (focused on identity).
Here’s the takeaway: habits are powerful because they help shape the person you want to be.
If you’re unsure about a habit, ask yourself this: “Does this behavior help me become the person I want to be? Does this habit support or go against my identity?”
Habits that match your identity are usually good. Habits that go against it? Probably not so much.
You might also like: Self-Discovery Questions to Help You Truly Understand Yourself
2. Be Aware of Your Habits
To break bad habits, the first step is knowing they exist. You can’t change a habit if you don’t recognize it. If you’re struggling, try a technique called pointing and naming—it’s as simple as saying out loud what you’re about to do and why.
For example, if you want to eat less junk food but you find yourself reaching for a cookie, say out loud: “I’m about to eat this cookie, but I don’t need it. Eating too much junk food isn’t good for my health.”
Hearing your actions and their consequences spoken out loud can make them feel more real. It brings your habits into focus and helps stop you from falling back into old patterns.
This technique doesn’t just work for breaking bad habits—it’s great for remembering tasks too. If you say, “I need to go to the post office tomorrow afternoon,” you’re more likely to follow through.
Changing behavior always starts with awareness. Tools like pointing and naming help you notice your habits and recognize the signals that trigger them. Once you spot the triggers, you can begin to respond differently.
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3. How Do I Stop Bad Habits? I Use the Implementation Intention Technique
We often say things like, “I’ll eat healthier” or “I’ll write more,” but we don’t decide exactly when or where we’ll do it. Instead, we leave it up to chance and hope we’ll remember or feel motivated at the right moment.
This is where implementation intentions can make a big difference. They turn vague goals into clear, actionable plans. Many times, the problem isn’t lack of motivation—it’s lack of clarity.
If you don’t have a clear idea of when or where to act, it’s easy to keep putting it off.
Implementation intentions eliminate this uncertainty. Once you’ve made a plan, you don’t have to wait for inspiration or motivation. When the time comes, there’s no decision to make—just follow your plan.
A simple way to use this technique is to fill in the blank in this sentence: “I will (action) at (time) in (location).”
Here are some examples:
- Meditation: “I will meditate for two minutes at 5:00 AM in my bedroom.”
- Learning: “I will study French for 30 minutes at 8:00 PM in my bedroom.”
By being specific, you set yourself up for success.
You might also like: 100 Good Habits to Upgrade Your Life and Boost Success
4. Use the Habit Attachment Method
The things you do are often linked to what you just finished doing. Every action is like a clue that tells your brain what to do next. This is important because if you want to stop bad habits and start good ones, you can use this pattern to help you.
A great way to build a new habit is to connect it to something you already do regularly. This is called habit stacking.
Here’s how it works: After you do your current habit, you add the new habit right after it. The formula is: “After (the current habit), I do (the new habit).”
Here are some examples:
- Meditation: “After I make my morning cup of tea, I meditate for five minutes.”
- Working out: “After I take off my shoes, I put on my workout clothes.”
The trick is to match your new habit with something you already do every day. You’ll have the best chance of success if you pick a signal (or a clue) that happens often and naturally in your life.
Think about when you’re most likely to stick with the new habit. Don’t try to do something new at a time when you’re super busy or distracted. The signal for the habit needs to happen as often as you want to do the habit.
For example, if you want to do something daily, don’t attach it to something that only happens once a week.
To find good signals, make two lists:
- In the first column, write down the habits you already do every day. For example: “I brush my teeth. I make tea. I work out.”
- In the second column, list things that happen every day no matter what. For example: “The sun rises. I walk my dog. The sun sets.”
With these lists, you can figure out the best places to attach your new habit.
Make sure the signal is clear and specific. If the signal is too vague, it won’t work well. For example, saying “I want to read more” or “I want to eat healthier” is too general.
Instead, be specific: “After I close the door,” “after I brush my teeth,” or “after I sit at the table.” The clearer and stronger your new habit is tied to a specific signal, the more likely you’ll remember to do it when it’s time.
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5. Make It Visible
How do you break bad habits? Let’s start with something interesting. Experts say that about half of your brain’s power is used for seeing.
Since we rely on sight more than any other sense, it makes sense that things we see are the biggest motivators for what we do. That’s why even small changes in what you see around you can lead to big changes in your habits.
Here are some examples of how you can change your surroundings to make good habits easier:
- If you want to take your medicine every night, put the bottle next to the sink in the bathroom.
- If you want to drink more water, fill a few water bottles in the morning and leave them where you’ll see them.
When you want a habit to become a big part of your life, make sure its signals are easy to spot in your environment. It should feel simple and natural to make the better choice when the reminder for a good habit is right in front of your eyes.
Every action starts with a signal, and you’re more likely to notice signals that stand out. But sometimes our homes or workplaces make it hard to see these signals.
For example, it’s easy to forget to practice guitar if it’s hidden in a closet. It’s easy to skip vitamins if they’re tucked away in a drawer. When the signals for habits are invisible, they’re also easy to ignore.
On the flip side, when signals are obvious, they grab your attention and remind you to take action.
For instance, some people read books on the couch every evening, while others use that same couch to eat snacks and watch TV. The way we act in a space often depends on what we associate with it.
Here’s the good news: you can train yourself to link certain habits to specific places or objects. It’s even easier to start new habits in a fresh environment, where old signals aren’t getting in the way.
If you can’t move to a new place, you can still change how your current space is set up. Try creating zones for specific activities—like a corner for work, a table for eating, and a chair for reading.
If space is tight, even small changes, like clearing off a specific surface for a single purpose, can help.
One great way to stop bad habits is by removing the signals that trigger them. If you’re distracted by your phone, leave it in another room.
If social media makes you feel bad, avoid visiting those pages. If you watch too much TV, take the TV out of the bedroom. You don’t always need to make signals visible—sometimes making them invisible is the smarter choice.
6. Make It Attractive
Some habits are really easy to stick with—like eating junk food, playing video games, or scrolling through social media. Why? These habits are tied to dopamine, a brain chemical that makes us feel good.
But here’s the trick: dopamine doesn’t just make us happy when we do something fun. It also shows up when we expect something fun to happen.
For example, gamblers get a dopamine rush right before placing a bet, not just after they win. The excitement of what might happen is what makes them act.
To break a bad habit, you need to make good habits more appealing. The idea is to create excitement about the good thing you’re trying to do. A great way to do this is by using a strategy called temptation bundling.
Here’s how temptation bundling works: you pair something you need to do with something you want to do. The formula is:
- After I do the habit I already have, I’ll do the thing I need to do.
- After I do the thing I need to do, I’ll do the thing I want to do.
Here are some examples:
- If you want to read the news but also want to practice gratitude:
- After I make my morning coffee (current habit), I’ll say one thing I’m grateful for (necessary habit).
- After I say what I’m grateful for (necessary habit), I’ll read the news (fun habit).
- If you want to scroll Facebook but also want to work out more:
- After I pick up my phone (current habit), I’ll do ten push-ups (necessary habit).
- After I do ten push-ups (necessary habit), I’ll scroll Facebook (fun habit).
When you link something you need to do with something you want to do, it becomes easier to stick with the necessary habit. The anticipation of doing something fun afterward makes the necessary task more exciting.
Building an irresistible habit isn’t always easy, but pairing it with something enjoyable can make it way more appealing. This simple strategy can turn almost any habit into one you look forward to.
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7. Evaluate Your Surroundings
To stop bad habits, evaluate your surroundings. Relationships have a powerful effect on our behavior.
We take habits from the people around us. We copy how our parents resolve disagreements, how our friends talk to each other, and how our colleagues achieve results.
One of the most effective things you can do to create better habits is to join an environment in which your desired behavior is normal. New habits seem available when you see others following them every day.
If you’re surrounded by fit people, you’re more likely to consider exercising a usual habit. The surrounding environment shapes your assumptions about what’s considered normal. Surround yourself with people who have habits that you’d like to have.
8. Change Your Mindset
Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings, and we can use this knowledge to our advantage.
How can you reprogram your brain to enjoy troublesome habits? You can make painful habits more attractive by learning to associate them with a positive experience.
Sometimes all you need is a little change of mindset. We often talk about what we have to do during the day. We have to wake up early to go to work. We have to make another sales call at work.
Now imagine that we change only one word here: we don’t have to do anything; we can do it. We can wake up early in the morning to go to work. We can make another sales call.
By simply changing one word, you change your perspective and therefore break a bad habit. You no longer see these actions as a burden; you turn them into opportunities.

9. Reprogram Your Thoughts
By thinking differently about habits in order to bring out the good, you can reprogram your mind, stop bad habits, and make new habits more attractive. For example:
Training. A lot of people consider training to be a difficult task that consumes energy and exhausts you.
However, it can just as easily be seen as an opportunity to develop skills and train the body. Instead of saying, “I have to run in the morning”, say, “It’s time to increase endurance and develop speed.”
Saving money is often associated with sacrifice. But it can just as well be associated with freedom and not restriction if you understand one simple truth: if you spend less than you can, it will increase your future opportunities.
10. Create a Motivational Ritual
If you want to go a step further, you can create a motivational ritual. You just need to associate your habits with something enjoyable. Then you can use this signal whenever you need a little motivation.
This strategy can be used for almost any purpose. Let’s say you want to be happier.
Find something that truly makes you happy, such as petting a dog, and then create a short routine that you follow each time before engaging in your favorite activity.
For example, you may take a deep breath three times and smile. Take three deep breaths. Smile. Pet a dog. Repeat. Finally, you begin to associate this breathing and smiling routine with a good mood. It becomes a signal for a happy mood.
Once you’ve created that routine, you can use it whenever you want to change your emotional state. Are you tense at work? Take a deep breath three times and smile.
Does life make you unhappy? Take a deep breath three times and smile. Once a habit is created, the signal can trigger lust, even if it has nothing to do with the original situation.

11. Make It Easier
Energy is valuable, and the brain is programmed to save it whenever possible. It’s in human nature to use as little effort as possible.
If you have to decide between two similar choices, you naturally tend to choose the one that requires the least work.
One of the most effective ways to reduce habitual barriers is to shape your environment. However, the environment can also be optimized to make taking action easier.
The principle is to create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible. The hard thing about creating better habits is that you need to find ways to reduce obstacles to good habits and increase obstacles to bad habits.
Want to draw more? Put brushes, pencils, notebooks, and drawing supplies on the table. Want to work out more?
Prepare your workout clothes, sneakers, sports bag, and water bottle, and put them where you can see them. These are simple ways to turn good habits into the most convenient choices.
These principles can also be reversed. You can prepare the environment in a way that makes bad habits troublesome.
If you think you’re watching too much TV, unplug it after each use. Plug it back in only when you can say out loud which program you’re going to watch. That kind of preparation creates a sufficient barrier to prevent you from aimlessly watching TV.
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12. Use the Two-Minute Rule to Stop Bad Habits
How do you break bad habits if nothing else seems to work? You use the two-minute rule. Even if you know you need to start with small steps, it’s easy to start too big.
When you think about changing something, the excitement inevitably takes over, and the result is that you try to do too much too quickly.
The most effective way to avoid this tendency is to have a two-minute rule that says, “If you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes.” You can see that almost every habit can be reduced to two minutes.
The idea is to make starting a habit as easy as possible. Everyone can meditate for two minutes or read one page of a book. This is a powerful strategy because once you’ve started doing the right thing, it’s much easier to keep doing it.
A new habit shouldn’t seem like a challenge. Subsequent actions can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy. Your goal is to establish a so-called “gateway habit,” which will guide you to more effective choices.
In most cases, you can figure out the gateway habit by breaking down your goal and scaling it, starting with very simple steps and ending with hard steps.
For example, running a marathon is very difficult. Running five kilometers is difficult. Walking ten thousand steps is moderately difficult. Ten minutes of walking is easy.
And putting on your running shoes is very easy. Your goal may be to run a marathon, but the gateway habit is putting on your running shoes.
The fact is that the habit must first be established, and only then can it be improved.
Instead of trying to form an ideal habit from the beginning, do something simpler but more consistent. First, you have to standardize it, and only then can you optimize it.

13. Use the Commitment Device Method
Sometimes success doesn’t depend so much on simplifying good habits as it does on making bad ones complicated. If it’s difficult for you to follow your plans and stop bad habits, you can make them difficult by creating a commitment device.
The commitment device is a choice that you make right now that controls future actions. This is a method that will help you ensure future behavior, bind you to good habits, and prevent bad ones.
For example, you can reduce overeating by buying food in small packages. You can ask to be denied access to casinos or poker websites to prevent further gambling.
Commitment tools are useful because they allow you to take advantage of good intentions before you fall victim to temptation. The key is to change the task so that giving up a good habit is more difficult than following it.
If you feel motivated to get in shape, choose a yoga class and pay for it in advance. If you’re excited and want to start a business, immediately send an e-mail to some companies and arrange a consultation meeting.
In this case, you can only cancel the action by canceling the meeting, but this requires effort and can be costly. Commitment devices make bad habits troublesome and increase the likelihood of you doing the right thing in the future.
14. Make It Rewarding
As I mentioned, the whole reason I decided to write this blog post is that I was googling “How do I stop bad habits?” and I stumbled across a very useful piece of information. Let’s talk about changes.
Change is easy when it is enjoyable. We’re more likely to repeat the behavior when the experience is rewarding. The human brain has evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.
For the habit to last, you need a signal that the work has paid off successfully and that the effort was worth it. You’ve been to the gym a few times, but you’re not any stronger, any faster, or in any better shape—at least not significantly.
It takes months to lose a few kilograms or to get into shape, so that training becomes easier and easier. However, in the beginning, you need a reason to help you stay on track. You need immediate rewards.
One solution is to reverse this situation. You want to make prevention visible. When you’re a shopaholic, open a savings account and name it after something you want, for example, “Leather Jacket”.
Every time you want to buy something but don’t do that, transfer a certain amount of money to that account. If you didn’t buy the morning latte, transfer five euros. You skipped Netflix for a month; transfer ten euros.
It’s like creating a loyalty program for yourself. The immediate gratification that comes from seeing this money meant for a leather jacket is far superior to skipping something. You are turning not doing something into a rewarding action.

15. Track Your Habits
Habit tracking is a simple way to see how well you’re sticking to your goals. The easiest method? Get a calendar and mark off each day you follow your habit.
For example, if you meditate on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, you would put a big “X” on each of those days when you finish meditating. Over time, you’ll see a chain of Xs showing how consistent you’ve been.
Seeing your progress on the calendar can motivate you to keep going. Each time you record what you’ve done, it creates a little push to do the next habit. It’s like giving yourself a small reward for staying on track.
Habit tracking works because it gives you clear, visual signs of progress. For example, looking at a string of Xs on your calendar can remind you of how far you’ve come and why you shouldn’t stop now.
Studies show that tracking your actions makes you more likely to succeed. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, quit smoking, or lower your blood pressure, monitoring your progress helps. It keeps you focused and makes it easier to stick with your goals.
Tracking also keeps you honest. Many of us think we’re doing better than we actually are. We might believe we’ve been eating healthy or working out regularly when the truth is we haven’t done much.
Writing things down or marking a calendar gives you the real facts. It’s hard to lie to yourself when the evidence is right in front of you.
Another reason habit tracking works so well is that it feels good to see progress.
Watching that chain of Xs grow is satisfying. It makes you want to keep going. Small wins can be super motivating. Each little victory adds up, giving you a boost to stick with your habits.
In this way, tracking your habits can actually become exciting. Each time you check off another day, it’s like adding fuel to your fire to keep moving forward.
You might also like: 177 Habit Tracker Ideas to Help You Organize and Improve Your Life
16. How to Quickly Restore the Habit if It Breaks?
No matter how consistent you are with your habits, life will sometimes get in the way. No one is perfect, and that’s okay.
If you want to stop bad habits and build better ones, the key is to never skip something twice in a row. You can miss one workout, but don’t skip two workouts back-to-back.
You don’t have to be perfect, but you can avoid making the same mistake again. It’s not the first slip-up that will ruin your progress, it’s the pattern of letting it happen over and over.
Missing a habit once is a small mistake, but missing it twice makes it easier to keep skipping it. Breaking a habit doesn’t matter as much if you quickly get back on track.
Too often, we fall into the trap of thinking that if we can’t do something perfectly, we shouldn’t do it at all.
The real issue isn’t messing up—it’s the mindset that says you have to be perfect or you’re failing. We often don’t realize how important it is to show up, even on the tough days.
Missing one or two days can set you back more than all your good days combined.
Even if you only do a little, like ten squats or push-ups, it still counts. It’s not always about how much you do; it’s about being the kind of person who doesn’t skip their habit.
It’s easy to stay on track when things are going well, but the real test is showing up on the days when you don’t feel like it. Even if you can only do a little, it still helps to keep your habit alive.
Going to the gym for just five minutes might not be much, but it’s important because it builds the habit and shows that you’re someone who doesn’t quit.


17. Make It Painful
Just like we’re more likely to repeat a good habit when there’s a reward at the end, we’re also less likely to keep doing something when there’s a painful consequence.
Pain can be a strong teacher. If failing hurts, you’ll remember it. But if failing doesn’t cause much trouble, you’ll probably ignore it. The more immediate and costly a mistake is, the faster we learn from it.
For example, the fear of getting bad reviews makes a plumber do his best work. The thought that a customer might not return pushes a restaurant to make great food. When the consequences are serious, you learn quickly.
Laws are another example of how society changes habits. We all agree to follow certain rules, and if we don’t, there’s a punishment. That’s how laws help everyone act a certain way.
Luckily, you can create a quick penalty for bad habits by making a habit contract. Just like governments use laws to hold people accountable, you can use a habit contract to hold yourself accountable.
A habit contract is an agreement (either written or spoken) where you promise to replace a bad habit with a good one. You also set a penalty for if you don’t stick to the plan.
Find one or two people who will help keep you on track and ask them to sign the contract with you.
You might also like: These Self-Love Habits Transformed My Life Last Year
Are You Looking for Ways to Break a Bad Habit?
How do YOU break bad habits? If your friend came to you and asked, “How do I stop bad habits?” what would you tell them? Let me know in the comments below!
Sarah
Such great tips! I think the motivational ritual is a really cool idea. Thanks for sharing!
Angie
What a great post on this topic! I do want to create a few new habits, but fail every time. Will try again with the tips mentioned in this post. Thanks for sharing!
Annalise
Wow this is so thoughtful and full of amazing information! I will be referring back to this when I need it for sure!
Katherine
Great post! I seem to have fallen out of my good habits cycle so I’m going to try these tip out! Thanks for sharing!
TBT
Such a fantastic post with a methodical approach to forming habits!! I especially liked the attachment method; its a really smart way to form a habit (and is also more likely to make you form that habits). Really enjoyed reading this!
Nicole @ MillenialMom
These are some really great tips to break bad habits by building new habits to use instead. I especially love the idea about the two minute rule. You are right that so often we get stuck into bad habits because building a new habit is so difficult, and demands a lot of our mental energy. Making something so simple that it only takes two minutes is a great way to be sure that it isn’t too hard. Plus, when you do the new habit and succeed, that is inherently reinforcing in our minds. Success is a huge motivator so being able to quickly succeed in the new habit is bound to make us want to do it more! Thank you for sharing these wonderful ideas, so helpful!
Christine
Many good tips. Making to change attractive and visible seem to be the first steps I could make. I’m saving this for future reference.
Kaybee Lives
I love this! I have a few bad habits that drive me crazy and I just cant seem to break them. These tips are super helpful and I cant wait to see how well they work for me!