When you scroll through your social media and scan your friends’ posts – yoga at dawn, vegan lunch, an afternoon jog – it can be easy to feel like you’re not doing enough.
In truth, you’re doing as much as you can and you’re doing it really well! You may just have a bad habit or two that you’d like to break – maybe you want to quit sugar or reduce your social media time.
The good news is that you don’t need to overhaul your whole life to break a habit. Here are some simple ways you can change a bad habit to a good habit when you’re a busy mum.
1. Don’t quit every bad habit at once
If you’ve decided to get fitter, don’t quit sugar, join the gym and go vegan all on the same day. With everything else going on in your life, you’ll get overwhelmed and give up quickly.
Instead, start by changing one small thing until it becomes second nature, and then change another thing.
Also, creating small goals and celebrating small wins will make you feel successful and more inclined to keep going.
2. Tell a friend you want to break a habit
We’re far more likely to do something once we’ve told someone we’re going to do it. So you should tell a friend that you intend to change your bad habit – it’ll give you the added motivation to keep going when you just want to give up.
Being accountability buddies is an awesome way for two friends to help each other change a bad habit. You can check in on each other, be emotional supports and celebrate your wins together.
3. Set reminders for yourself
The toughest part about changing a habit is those first days and weeks where you do it unconsciously – like biting your nails or making your third coffee of the day without realising you’re doing it.
Using reminders can stop you before you do it. If you want to go to bed earlier, set a reminder on your phone. If you spend too much time sitting down, set desktop reminders to take breaks. Put post-it notes in the fridge – whatever will stop you before you ruin your good work without meaning to!
4. Know what triggers your bad habit
Once you’ve become conscious of your habit, take notice of when you tend to do it – perhaps at certain times of the day or during certain events. If you plan for these ‘trigger times’, you might be able to break your habit faster.
If you know you’ll crave sugar after a meal, make sure you have a healthy option at hand such as a piece of fruit. If you know you’ll lose hours on social media after dinner, put the device out of your reach after dinner and plan other activities like books, puzzles and TV.
Preparation is key when you’re breaking a habit.
5. Be kind to yourself
Most importantly, be patient. It takes time to change a habit, depending on how long you’ve been doing it and the emotional reward you get from it. And when each day is so demanding, the effort of changing can exhaust you. So be kind to yourself.
Accept that you’re going to slip up occasionally because life is just like that. When you do slip up, look at what triggered it and consider how you might be able to avoid it in the future.
And please consider talking to a professional if you feel your mental health is being affected. Some bad habits just require a bit of extra help to break!
