Harnessing the Habits of Disease
Do you know how to identify the behaviors that may be leading you toward unhealthy choices and consequences—and what to do about them?
Habits are not broken; they are simply made insignificant by losing their control over your life. The key to your success is not removing the bad habits, but learning to minimize their influence on your choices.
Take Shape For Life can help you do this by creating awareness and helping you build Habits of Health into your life. The sheer volume of new, healthy daily choices will gradually replace your unhealthy behaviors with healthy ones over time.
How your “routine” can keep you unhealthy
Do you find it easier to manage your bad habits when you’re on vacation? If so, maybe it’s because you have removed yourself from your daily routine and all the day-to-day triggers that encourage habits of disease.
Most of us can’t be on vacation all the time—but you can certainly identify and eliminate triggers by rethinking your daily routines at home.
Harnessing unhealthy habits: specific strategies
STOP — CHALLENGE — CHOOSE is a potent technique that can break the links between events, unpleasant emotions, and undesirable reactions.
- STOP: Take a deep breath and think. Suspend action.
- CHALLENGE: Ask, “Why am I feeling like this? What outcome do I want from this?”
- CHOOSE: Make a healthy choice for an optimal outcome and awareness of alternative behavior.
Some tips for changing unhealthy habits
- Avoid peer pressure and toxic environments.
- Replace a negative choice with a positive choice.
- Remove triggers from your environment whenever you can.
- Keep a journal to keep track of your choices.
