22 WAYS TO FINALLY STOP YOUR BAD HABITS

22 WAYS TO FINALLY STOP YOUR BAD HABITS

Bisi Adewale 

Habits are known as routine behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. Samuel Johnson said, “The chain of habit is generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken”. 

It is something you do regularly, often without thinking about it because you have done it so many times. Habit can be both negative or Positive. Positive habits can help build your marriage while bad or negative habits can destroy marriage, relationship and even your life. Our emphasis will be narrow down to how to stop your bad habit:

1. Determine the habits you must stop. You need to know precisely the habit you wants to stop. 
2. Write it down.Write some of the habits on paper and their effects on your life, marriage and career. 
3. Make a choice.Choose between continuing bad habits or to live a better life. I know your choice is to live a better life, am I right?
4. Write down the gains.Write down what you are likely to gain if those bad habits are dealt with. 
5. List the habits you want to develop.Don’t just write down the habits you want to deal with, write down the ones you want to develop. 
6. One at a time.Take one habit and deal with it, don’t try to focus two at a time you may not be successful in dealing with them together. 
7. Ask God for help.No matter how hard you try, you may never be successful in dealing with your habits without the help of God. So go ahead ask God for help, tell Him you are helpless, the help of God is always at the maximum if we declare our helplessness to Him, His strength is maximum in our weaknesses. 
8. Quit feeding the bad habits.One of the best ways to stop a bad habit is to stop feeding it. Yes, starve it to death. If you discover that television is one of the thing feeding it, you may quit watching television for now. A man who has his office at home discover that his business is dying because he is always at home watching too much of television, to simply destroyed this habit is by moving his office out of his house and also refuse to buy a television in his office, within weeks; he was able to deal with these bad habit. If you discover that your friends are the ones helping you to feed those habits, change your friendship. Those that have bad habits of drunkenness, drug abuse, infidelity, should take note that their friendship most of the time help them to sustain those bad habits. A man who kept on falling into adultery with his secretary decided not to employ a female secretary and female personal assistance again. According to him, he has been able to keep to his marriage vow in the last 15 years since he stopped employing female secretary. 
9. List areas where you are feeding the habits.Now you need to pick your pen and list areas where you’ve been feeding bad habits and what you are going to do to stop them.
10. Make “no exception” policy.Don’t give any exception; don’t say I will not go out with so and so friend again except on public holidays. Don’t give room for any exception. 
11. Deal with your behaviour. Be in charge of your attitude, action to be conscious of, the way you act and react, they are the foundation of your habits, to deal with your behaviour you must deal with your values. 
12. Deal with your values.Your values are your standard, your guiding principles, they form the basis of your behaviour as your behaviours form your habits. If your guiding principles are wrong, your behaviour can never be right and you won’t be able to break bad habits. For example, a man whose values is “ A woman must be disciplined by her husband”, will find it difficult to stop his wife battering habits no matter how he tries. To deal with your values you must deal with your belief system.
13. Deal with your belief system.Your belief system determines your values, when your belief system says “A man can beat anybody in his house”. These values will be “there is nothing wrong if I beat my wife am only discipline her” there his behaviour will be that of violence and wife battering over a little misunderstanding. To deal with your belief system, you must deal with your thinking. 
14. Deal with your thinking.You must learn to think right if you want to live right. If you think it, you re likely going to act. Whatever you think about regularly will end up forming your belief system. Then your values and will form the basis of your behaviour and when you believe it regularly it becomes a habit. To deal with your thinking; you must take charge of your mind. 

15.How to take charge of your mind. The mind is the most important part of everyman. It is usually said that “MIND IS THE MAN”. “Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life”. Proverbs 4:23 

To take charge of your mind, you must stop feeding it with wrong things from friends, television, radio, books, magazines, interest, etc. then you begin to feed it with the right thing especially the word of God. “How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119: 9,11)

16. Go ahead consciously to stop that bad habit, note the date you stopped and stayed by it.
17. Replace it with a good habit.The best way to stop a bad habit is to replace it with a new one. Determine the good new habit to use to replace the bad one. You can decide to form the habit of reading to replace bad television habits you want to deal with. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good”Romans 12: 21
18. Declare yourself a victor. Declare your victory in prayer and your words, declare victory over that habit and claim it forever. 
19. Break its spiritual stronghold on you. Many habits have a spiritual foundation, so pray aggressive to break its stronghold on you, paralyse demons controlling the habits and declare yourself free from them. 
20. Surrender yourself for deliverance. Some habits will need you to surrender yourself to higher spiritual authority in deliverances sections to get your total freedom; please don’t hesitate to do this. 
21. Don’t give up. If you fail, don’t surrender go ahead try again with the help of God you will win. 
22. Build accountability. Look for someone that can hold you accountable. 

Remember that it is your habit that grows to become your character and your character determines your reputation which in turn determines your destiny. So if you want to destroy bad character break a bad habit by stopping bad behaviour, stop bad behaviour by changing your values, change your values by changing your belief system, change your belief system by changing your thinking this you can do by changing your thought-life and you can only change your thought-life by feeding your mind with good things from the word of God and stop bad things from the world and your environment from entering your mind.

© Bisi Adewale 2020