Avoid the Triggers!

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Table of Contents

• Men’s Must Read Article

• Parker’s Breakdown: Bad Habit Triggers

• Fitness trivia ❓

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🚨Men’s Must Read Article🚨

Need to Break a Bad Habit? Start by Accepting This Truth

We have all tried to break a bad habit, but it just seems impossible!

No matter what we do, we just keep going back to it.

Well, this article by INC.com gives steps to attack this bad habit! Here are some of the main points: 👇

• Identification of Habit Triggers

• Replace Bad Habits with Desirable Ones

• Patience in Breaking Habits

• Understanding Neural Pathways

Parker’s Breakdown: Bad Habit Triggers ❌

Have you ever gotten pretty far in not doing a habit you were trying to get rid of?

You go a long time and then out of nowhere on a random day, you fail or relapse!

Why did this happen? Why did I do that? 😕

Well don’t beat yourself up, odds are you slowly let your ‘trigger’ suck you back into the bad habit.

Triggers refer to the specific cues or situations that prompt the initiation of the undesired behavior. So for some, this could be extreme as seeing a needle or smelling smoke, but for most of us it is as simple as being bored or being out with certain friends.

So for example, someone trying to quit smoking may feel confident being around people who smoke or even smelling smoke and they have no problem turning it down. But when they start drinking, their will power to turn it down lowers and eventually after a certain amount of time, they smoke again. 🚬

Another example could be someone who is trying to stop drinking. He comes home after a long day at work, he is alone, and he just wants to relax. Well, for him, his trigger would be boredom. He can try to not drink for an hour or two, but after being bored for a certain amount of time, his brain is going to justify to itself why he should have a drink, and then a couple hours later he will be passed out drunk in a recliner.

So what is the first step to quitting a bad habit? It is identifying the ‘triggers’ to this bad habit and stopping these triggers immediately. Think about all of the times you were about to do a bad habit. What was that feeling or idea or cue that even made you think of it? 🤔

For most of us it involves simple things, like boredom for example. If the man above wants to quit drinking, he needs to find an activity or good habit to fill his boredom with. Otherwise, his brain will get bored and start looking for something fun to do, and the most fun thing it will come up with is probably the bad habit of drinking. This makes boredom his trigger!

So, think of your bad habit and think about what are the triggers or cue’s that make you think of it and make you want to do it. Then, immediately cut those out and try replacing that cue with a cue for a good habit! 👍

Fitness trivia ❓

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