5 Steps to Breaking a Habit

To break a habit requires 5 general steps.

Let’s look at them in the context of a popular habit: hitting snooze when your alarm goes off.

(1) Create Awareness of the Habit

The first step to breaking a habit is to recognize that it is a habit. If you’re trying to change behavior that you believe is conscious on your part, it will be much more difficult to make the change sustainable.

Hitting snooze is a habit.

In fact, it’s the archetypal example of a habit: a reflexive action you take in response to a trigger.

It’s also important to recognize that breaking a habit is much more difficult than creating a habit. Old habits die hard.

You will inevitably slip up. Self-compassion will be essential on this journey.

(2) Identify the Trigger and Surface Response

Every habit is,on the surface, a response to a trigger. It’s easiest to start with the outer action we take in response to the trigger.

When it comes to hitting snooze, this one is easy:

• *Trigger*: Alarm goes off.
• *Reflexive Action*: You hit snooze and roll over.

(3) Identify the Emotions and/or Thoughts Between the Trigger and Response

This is where it gets a little more complicated.

The action we take in response to a trigger isn’t the only habitual response.

Between the trigger and the outer action is a brief moment in which you have a thought, emotion, or physical sensation.

It’s those thoughts, emotions, or sensations that actually lead to the outer action.

The challenge is that these thoughts or emotions are often subconscious. To complicate it further, there may be more than one thing happening in response to the trigger.

For example, when the alarm goes off you might hear your mind say “I’m tired.” That might be true. Your body might actually feel tired.

And, it’s also possible that “tired” is a mask for the thoughts and emotions in your subconscious.

You might feel resistance to a meeting you have scheduled that day.

Or, maybe it has nothing to do with what you have scheduled that day. Perhaps you feel lost in your life or unsure about your future. Maybe you’re worried about a sick friend or world events. Those thoughts might not be in the forefront of your mind.

Instead, when the alarm goes off, your mind might say “I’m tired,” leading you to hit snooze.

You will need to do a little inner work to get to what’s happening in your subconscious mind.

This is where a good coach can be helpful. It’s hard to see these things on our own. However, don’t get stuck here. You can move onto Step 4 while you’re sorting through this part.

(4) Change the Trigger and/or Response:

The good news is that you can do this step even without doing step 3, which gives you time to work through the inner pieces.

In this step you have options:

• Eliminate or change the trigger OR
• Change your response to the trigger

In our example of stopping to hit snooze, we are working on changing our response to the trigger. It’s worth noting, however, that there is another option: you can stop setting an alarm altogether and simply wake up when you wake up.

In the snooze scenario, removing the trigger might not be a realistic option for you. In other contexts, it’s a helpful option to have. For example, if you tend to eat junk food while watching television late at night, you can stop watching TV (remove the trigger) or not bring the junk food into the house, which inhibits the automatic response.

(5) Create Rules to Encourage Your Desired Behavior

To keep your actions intentional, create rules for the new behavior you want to condition.

For example, you might have a rule that you must get out of bed when the alarm goes off. If you want to sleep more, you might have a rule that you must shut off the alarm completely and risk oversleeping.

If you’re snacking in front of the TV late at night, you might make a rule cutting off television after a certain time. Or you might have a rule that you cannot bring food to the room where you watch TV.

The rules you create are up to you. They don’t need to make sense to anyone else.

Final Thoughts

Remember that breaking a habit often requires making a radical change from what you’ve been doing. It can feel uncomfortable. And you will slip up periodically. View your slip-ups as an opportunity to refine your rules and embrace the process with self-compassion.