Best ways for doctors to break their bad habits

Do you have a bad habit you wish you could change? Perhaps it’s spending too much time after a long shift on the couch watching TV. Maybe it’s avoiding patient questions. Or overscheduling your workday. Or not taking your own health seriously. Or trying to do everything yourself instead of delegating it to your staff.

Perhaps Warren Buffett best captured the essence of bad habits when he said: “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”

But take heart—bad habits can be broken. Not easily, but they can be broken. Here are some pointers on how to quit those less-than-stellar habits you may have acquired.

Become aware of what your bad habits are. Make an honest assessment of the bad habit you’re hoping to lose. When do you do it? How many times a day? Where? With whom? What triggers it? Awareness is the first step to making a change. In an article on breaking bad habits, James Clear suggests keeping a piece of paper and a pen close at hand, and keeping a tally of each time you engage in your bad habit. At the end of the day, you should have a clear idea of how prevalent it is.

Recognize that all bad habits provide some sort of benefit. These benefits can be physical or emotional. For example, drinking alcohol or smoking can be classified as providing physical “benefits,” while staying in a bad relationship falls into the emotional “benefits” category.

Some bad habits are mild, others moderate, and still others are very strong (think addiction), according to Bob Taibbi, LCSW, in a blog published in Psychology Today.

“Habits become hard to break because they are deeply wired by constant repetition into our brains. And when you add pleasure to them—like you have with drugs or porn, for example—the pleasure centers of the midbrain get fired up as well, and continue to fire long after the habits stop, creating the cravings that folks struggle with,” wrote Taibbi.

Dig deep to find out the underlying cause of your bad habit. Some of the common causes of bad habits are stress, boredom, or—digging deeper—fear or a mistaken belief. To overcome your bad habit, you must know why it is there. Biting your nails or clenching your teeth typically arise from trying to cope with stress. Or perhaps it’s boredom that causes you to incessantly check your email or scroll social media sites.  

Avoid bad-habit triggers. Although some triggers (like stress in the workplace) cannot be completely avoided, other triggers are easier to control. For example, if you only drink alcohol when there is alcohol in the house, remove it from your house. If you only eat chips when they are in the cupboard, throw them away or don’t buy them at all. If you smoke when you drink, don’t drink. Be cognizant of your environmental triggers, and set yourself up for success by changing them.

Replace your bad habit with a good habit. Say you smoke when you are stressed. Simply deciding to not smoke when you are stressed is not going to work. You need to replace smoking with something healthier to fall back on. But, the key is planning ahead, and being ready with a replacement. Be prepared with a stick of gum, some hard candy, or—healthiest of all—breathing exercises instead of smoking.

Visualize yourself successfully kicking your bad habit. Imagine yourself as a non-smoker. Imagine yourself buying healthier foods. Imagine yourself not wasting time checking your inbox constantly. Imagine yourself not overscheduling your workday. Visualization is a powerful tool. Use it.

Plan for failure. Despite our best intentions and efforts, we will all slip up in trying to get rid of a bad habit. We are, after all, only human. Relax and go easy on yourself if you do. 

Everyone has bad habits. The key to getting beyond them is self-awareness and planning. If you’re trying to kick a bad habit—like smoking or procrastinating or not getting enough sleep, maybe these words of wisdom from Jaime Escalante will help: “Life is not about how many times you fall down. It's about how many times you get back up.”