So, you have bad habits. They suck, don’t they? I know my bad habits are bad habits for a reason and because they are habits, they are hard to break. Sometimes, these bad habits lead to poor life choices, and you all-around just feel shitty and lousy and no one likes feeling that way.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been dealing with bad habits developing and coming back every once and awhile due to the excessive stress I’ve been going through because of grad school. Anyway, here are some ways to make your bad habits actually good habits!
Bad habit: Poor Time Management // Good Habit: Calendar Organizing
Listen, no matter who you are, I think everyone has experienced poor time management at least once in their life. We have deadlines coming up, bills have to get paid, and it seems like every now and then, we never have time to hang out with friends or see family that often. One great way that I try to organize my time is to have a dry-erase calendar board. It’s beneficial to me because if I ever decide I need more time to work on something or if something in my schedule changes, I can just erase it. Doing that on regular calendar make it look less organized and messier due to the cross-outs and rewrites.
If you’re a stressed out student in school that feels like your assignments are eating you alive (like me), then it’s crucial that not only you write down the deadlines for these assignments, but also the days that you are planning to work on those assignments. Make sure you have different colored markers or pens to differentiate the assignments and classes you have to do the assignments for. (Of course, you can always color coordinate different things that pertain to you like appointments, bills that are due, or social events). I adapted this little technique during my first semester in grad school when I only had a month to literally write 30+ pages for two of my classes. I would color coordinate the assignments that I wanted to do on each day for whatever class it was for. I tell you not, I finished everything before the semester ended, and now I’m trying to get through this semester following the same technique. Whether this looks like it would be overwhelming or not, I assure you that you’ll get things done more efficiently when you plan ahead when to work on things instead of just waiting it out last minute.
Bad Habit: Too Much Junk Food // Good Habit: Portion Control
They always say that once you eat one chip out of the bag, it’s hard to stop. In my duration of being on WeightWatchers, I’ve hit this dead end where it’s been hard to lose more weight because I just really love junk food. Like seriously, that commercial where Oprah is practically screaming she loves chips makes me angry because I LOVE CHIPS AND YET THEY ARE STILL BAD FOR YOU. Anyway, cutting down on junk food is one of the hardest habits to break. One way to change it into a good habit is to possibly find an alternative to binge-eat on these bad foods. For example, if you really love potato chips, eat baked potato chips instead of the regular one. If you have a sweet tooth, make sure you eat sugary foods in moderation. Maybe half a donut, half a candy bar, half a brownie, whatever it is that you like. Of course, you don’t need to take it out of your life completely; take a day out of your week to treat yourself. I know that if I’m out with my best friend, we eat a lot. As long as you’re not eating junk food all day every day, then you’re helping to cut out some bad foods in your diet.
Bad Habit: Over-Tweezing & Nail Biting // Good Habit: Eyebrow Pencil & Nail Polish
One personal bad habit I have is that I over-tweeze my eyebrows when they get a little stubby. Because of that, I haven’t had tails to my eyebrows in a really long time. They’ve gotten better over the years, but I still consider it a bad habit because I still over-tweeze. One good way I try to not do that is that I do have my eyebrows drawn on for most of the day, and yes, I sometimes fall asleep with them. I find myself tweezing them at night when I’m laying down, and my hands just gravitate towards my eyebrows. With my eyebrows drawn on, I don’t pick at them as much. The first time I did it, a lot of my eyebrow hair did grow back, and I’m currently doing the same thing to help them grow back again. It’s the same thing when you’re a nail biter; painting your nails will prevent you from biting them because then your nail job will get all chipped and nasty and nobody likes chippy nails.
There’s a lot of bad habits out there, and it honestly does take some thinking to make them as good habits. These are just a few, but I believe any reasonable bad habits could be turned into good ones.
-Liz (:
Letters From Liz. 