Luckily, you’ve come across this OA guide where we outline the five steps to breaking any bad habit. The journey ahead is strenuous, but stick to these tactics, and you’ll break your bad habit in no time!

The first step to breaking any negative tendency is figuring out why you do it. Every habit has a trigger that causes it. It can be anything from boredom or stress to a sound or smell. In a substance addiction like smoking, the trigger can even be an internal factor like a lack of nicotine in your system. Pay close attention to your environment and try to pick up on patterns and stimuli that cause you to act out your bad habit. Once you identify your triggers, you can start eliminating or replacing them – more on this in Step 3.

Setting and achieving goals is a bit more complex than just saying you’ll do something. Every new year, billions of people around the world make resolutions that they’ll never accomplish. They don’t fail at their objectives because they’re unmotivated or undisciplined – they fail because they’re setting goals the wrong way. When you create targets for defeating your bad habit, your objectives must be explicit. The best way to do this is by setting SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym that outlines the five key aspects of any successful goal:

Specific: Your goal must be explicit. Anyone should be able to understand exactly what it means and requires.

Measurable: You must be able to objectively measure your progress. No guesswork allowed.

Achievable: Be ambitious but realistic. If you smoke a pack of cigarettes every day, don’t expect to fully quit smoking in a week.

Results-Oriented: The objective must have a clear end goal. You must be able to clearly and objectively determine if you succeeded or failed.

Time-Based: Your goal must have a time constraint. Create urgency by giving yourself a clear deadline.

Poor goal setting example: “I want to watch less TV.”

SMART Goal example: “For the next two weeks, I will limit my TV time to 1 hour/day. For the next two weeks, only 30 mins/day. By the end of the month, I will completely stop watching TV.”

In Step 1, we mentioned the idea of replacing your trigger or habit with a less harmful one. Sometimes, when dealing with a hard-to-quit habit or addiction, it’s nearly impossible to stop your tendency. If that’s the case, you can start by replacing your harmful habit with a less dangerous one that satisfies the same trigger. A prime example of this is switching to e-cigarettes or nicotine patches when trying to quit smoking. Obviously, the trigger of this habit that you’ll eventually try to eliminate is the nicotine addiction. But while you’re working on that, switching to a less harmful alternative is a big step forward.

Another way to replace your habit with an alternative is to simply not have time for the negative routine. This is especially effective when combating a non-addictive habit like watching too much TV. If you have difficulty regulating your screen time, pack your schedule with things that get you out of the house. Join a casual sports league or spend more time with family. Being too busy to perform your bad habit is often enough to cut it out of your routine permanently.

Rewarding yourself might sound childish at first – and it is! But that’s why it works. There’s a scientific reason why rewarding your progress is so effective at breaking bad habits. Neuroscientists have figured out that habits and habit-making are centralized in a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Coincidentally, this area of the brain also plays a key role in memory, emotional development, and recognizing patterns – all things that children are excellent at! In other words, when you reward yourself for your progress, you’re rewarding the inner child that controls your habits.

Fully breaking a bad habit can take months – especially if it comes with a physical addiction. That’s why it’s so crucial to reward yourself along the way. Suppose you had the bad habit of spending 5 hours every day looking at cat memes on the internet. After following the steps in this OG guide, you’ve cut your daily "memeing" down to 2 hours. That’s a huge step! There’s still work to be done, but you should reward yourself for the effort you made and reinforce this new level of discipline.

Commitment is key to breaking any bad habit. You must be willing to consistently dedicate yourself to changing your routine. There’s only one problem with that: it’s easy to cheat when nobody is watching. If no one else is aware of your goals or performance, it’s tempting to slack off. 

Imagine you want to start waking up at 5 AM and going to the gym. When your alarm rings in the morning, you’ll be tempted to turn it off and go back to sleep. But if you know your training partner is waiting for you at the gym, your commitment to them will get you out of bed. When breaking bad habits, finding ways to hold yourself accountable for your progress is key to success. The best way to do this is to find a community of people who are as motivated and driven as you are. Unfortunately, finding a community of people with warrior mindsets is nearly impossible these days. 

That’s why we created Operators Association – to bring together the world’s most disciplined, hard-working, and motivated individuals. When you become an OA Aspiring Operator, you get instant access to our exclusive accountability group. There, you’ll join a team of future, current, and former SOF operators who will push you to succeed and hold you accountable for your failures. If you’re dedicated to making a positive change in your life, visit our membership packages page and get started today!