How long to break a habit

How long to break a habit?

It is the most revolving phrase when it comes to breaking the habit that “21 days are enough to break a habit”, now we have to find out either this really works or it is a myth only.

Don’t you feel that there are a few habits you ought to change for good as it is good to shed some old habits and to develop new ones.

Now, the question is how long does it take to break the old habit? And another question that arises is; does it work same for the children as well as the adults?

Let’s check that how is it relative and how many days are actually required to break a habit.

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How long to break a habit

It usually depends on number of factors, and there is no rocket science in it. All the things in this world matter on the amount of commitment you made for that specific thing. You need to commit that you want to achieve it and eventually you will achieve it as you were committed to do so. Let us understand this with an example, if you want to break the habit of watching television and you want to pay attention to other things that are more important than watching television, but you will not achieve much success in it as there is no alternate goal. Similarly, if you want to give up the habit of watching television and you are going to the gym instead of watching television then you will have more success in that as you are doing something else in the same time in which you were watching television earlier.

At the same time, if you want to break some self-soothing habit such as biting your nails or tapping your foot on the floor when you are nervous; you will feel much difficult to stop as it is a self-soothing habit and you will do it unintentionally. Now, what is the answer to this question that how to break this type of habit? Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this very question but we surely will find ways to break that type of habits too.

Time frame

The time frame for breaking any kind of habit may vary from person to person. It depends on the person that how much he is committed to break the habit, the more is the commitment, more will be the chances to break the habit. The longer the person is having the habit, the longer it will take to break it as there will be less control of the person due to the fact that the specific habit has gone into the automatic response in the brain.

How to do it?

As if you have decided to break that specific habit, all you need is you be committed to the fact that you need to break that habit no matter what happens. For instance, you want to break habit of eating all those delicious foods you were eating for a very long time and now you need to stop eating all those things then what will you do. Moreover, not only you need to break the habit of eating them but also you have to eat salads and juices instead of those delicious foods.

What are you going to do and how will you break that habit?

Keep this fact in mind that you never can do it all of a sudden, as in you cannot just start eating salads right away and leave the desired food. It is nearly impossible for most of the people.

Baby steps

What you need to do is to take baby steps, such as you can eliminate the favourite dishes one by one and add other things one by one as well. This way you can manage it well and sooner than later you would be able to do it more easily and will get used to it.

This very method can be applied to all the other habits as well, which seems difficult to break. Keeping the analogy of taking baby steps in mind you can break any habit that seems difficult to break. For example, breaking the habit of smoking, now how you can implement the same analogy to this habit? Well, you can do it this way that you can gradually decrease the number of cigarettes you smoke. As far as taking baby steps is concerned, you can decrease a few cigarettes per week and then per day. You can do it easily without any hassle, but commitment is needed after all.

Swapping the habit

Another technique we use to break any habit is to swap that habit with something more desirable habit. For example, you can swap the habit of biting nails with chewing gum you like. In this way, you can break that bad habit of biting nails easily. The oral urge of a smoker can be reduced if the smoker keeps mints in his mouth so that the urge can be satisfied and thus he can reduce that bad habit of smoking.

End note

After going through everything this is clear as a bell that the powerful changes are not going to happen very quickly and it is not a matter of overnight. We can say that changing a habit in 21 days is probably a myth and if it is a myth then how can you determine the number of days in which you set your goal to change the specific habit. Well, you can set your own time frame, and at least give yourself two months in order to get rid of that habit completely.

All the people will have different speed of changing the habits and that depends on lots of variables varying from person to person.

It does not matter how long it take to break the bad habit, just be committed and sooner than later you will achieve success in this regard. Keeping the factor in mind will help you getting rid of bad habit that worst habits can cost you your life and your relationships. Just think over it and you will be motivated to break it.