Brilliant Ways To Break Your Bad Habits For Good

Struggling to stay on track with all those virtuous New Year’s resolutions? It’s easier than you think, our experts tell Sharon Walker…

- Sharon Walker

This time of year we’re all thinking about our New Year’s resolutions – which is likely to trigger one of two reactions. Either “Help! How on earth can I keep this up?” or “Yawn, I’ve tried that before and it never works”. If you’ve attempted to lose weight, cut back on booze or give up smoking, but never quite stuck with it, we hear you. That’s why we’ve called on behaviour-change experts to help you get to the bottom of what’s really driving your bad habits – and help you achieve your goals.

1 MAKE MICRO-CHANGES

At this time of year we all want to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. So we aim high by signing up for Dry January, a new gym membership and probably the latest diet too. But that’s a mistake. “Doing too much, too soon, wears out your willpower muscle and sets us up for failure,” says Dr Heather McKee. “Habits are a complex mesh of behaviours – and you can’t resolve them all at once. You must work on untangling them one by one until the habit knot is sorted.”

So start with the habits that are easiest to change first, as research shows that these smaller, simpler actions become habitual more quickly. “Each time you accomplish a micro-change you get a sense of satisfaction and this spurs you on to stick with your goals,” says McKee.

DO IT Set yourself one small change each week. For example, plan a healthy snack at 4pm to avoid the biscuit slump, or aim to walk 100 more steps on your fitness tracker each day.

2 ASK “WHY?”