A client was presented to me who had a skin picking habit. They would pick their fingers all hours of the day. When I was approached with the case, I almost considered it a defeat. The skin picking wasn’t intentional. He didn’t even know he was doing it. If he didn’t know he was doing it, how in the world was I going to stop him from doing it any longer?
Together we are going to address the question, what is a habit? We will also answer the question, can a habit truly be broken? My finger picking client allowed me to dig into the research, and this is what I found!
What is a habit anyway?
The skin picking is what I consider to be a “bad habit.” Yet, there are often times people approach me with “bad habits” to fix that are really not bad habits at all. You see, habits seem innocent. They seem harmless. We feel more comfortable to address some larger concerns under the umbrella of a “habit” because it helps us reconcile. Not all times though are these things actually considered a habit.
When we talk about bad habits, I put a four-part criterion together that I look for. In order for me to treat something as a “bad habit” I look that the action includes all of these four things:
- Something that we do repeatedly
- It’s relatively harmless to themselves or others
- Something we wish we didn’t do and hope to change
- An action we often don’t know we are doing.
In the case of my skin picking client, I agreed, this was a bad habit. He did it repeatedly, it was relatively harmless, he wanted to change – but often times he didn’t know he was doing it.
We all have bad habits. If someone were to ask you what your bad habit is, how would you answer? Some common answers are nail biting, saying “um”, playing with your hair, and leaving your dirty clothes on the ground. These are what I would classify as, bad habits.
So now that you know what a habit is, what habit are you going to address? You see, after digging into the research, it has been explained and proven that habits can be changed. Some amazing research came out of the University of Wisconsin that named three simple steps they found break these habits, and we are going to review them all in the upcoming weeks together!
Go ahead and pick a bad habit to change. This can be something that prevents you from being the best Mama you can be. This can include things such as looking at your phone, nagging, or snacking. Or maybe your child has a habit that you’d like to help them overcome. This could be things such as running in the house, making noises with their mouth, or whining. All of these ideas fit the definition of a habit, and is in fact something that can be overcame.
Do you have your idea? Are you ready to begin? I’d encourage you to head over to the FREEBIES section of my site and grab your FREE QUESTION GUIDE to get started!
I look forward to our time together! Let’s go break some bad habits!