Do I Have a Bad Habit?

There’s a stigma that puts a neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion on word “habit” but not all habits are actu­ally bad habits. In fact habit, as defined by Web­ster, refers to a “set­tled or reg­u­lar ten­dency or prac­tice”. In other words a habit is some­thing that you do auto­mat­i­cally in your day like brush­ing your teeth, show­er­ing, and get­ting dressed. These are all good activ­i­ties but it’s not to say that bad habits don’t exist.

Harm­ful Habit Warm­ing Signs

Think about when you are at work or doing some­thing that requires focus. Is there some­thing that grabs your atten­tion away for a pro­longed period of time? Does it inter­fere with your work? Does it inter­fere with rela­tion­ships with oth­ers? Do you feel trapped or tied down to some­thing? If you answered yes to any of these ques­tions odds are you have a harm­ful habit or an addiction.

Maybe you’re still on the fence about your habit. Here’s a way to find out if you habit is an addiction:

  1. Make a list at the start of you day of every­thing you need to do from eat­ing, sleep­ing, to doing the dishes.
  2. Ana­lyze your list. Do you do every­thing thing you needed to? Give it a per­cent­age score or a grade.
  3. Think. Why did you get the score that you did? Was it because of your habit? If it was, then this is a help­ful way to see the impact it has on you.

Break­ing the Habit

Now that you are aware there are a few easy steps to help com­bat the harm­ful habit.

  1. Learn or do new things. It could be a musi­cal instru­ment, read­ing a book, yoga, or vol­un­teer work. Just be sure it’s some­thing you don’t nor­mally do.
  2. Mark your cal­en­dar. Be strict for 21 days in order to over­come the habit.
  3. Get a hobby. Do some­thing con­struc­tive like sports, cook­ing, or fishing.
  4. Don’t go back to the habit if you think you’re in con­trol. It will become worse.

Ben­jamin Franklin once said, “Your net worth to the world is usu­ally deter­mined by what remains after your bad habits are sub­tracted from your good ones”. Fol­low­ing these steps will help you be aware of your harm­ful habits and be able to lose them.


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