How Long Does It Really Take To Break A Habit?

Love, Just Jass
3 min readMar 5, 2022

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Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash

Because some people like to claim that you should be able to just stop doing them.

Just like that.

Cold turkey.

And that just sounds completely ridiculous.

There is a reason that it is called a habit.

It is a behavior that is so engrained in you that you may not even realize you're doing it.

Some habits are good to have.

Such as making the bed everyday or washing the dishes.

These are a good habits that we should be doing every day to maintain a clean home.

But obviously, we all pick up some habits that are not so good.

Such as late night snacking or scrolling on social media for hours.

These habits are not beneficial to us no matter how much we enjoy engaging in them.

And if you have been doing these things for a while now, then it will be even harder to break that habit.

If you have ever tried to break a habit, then you know how hard that can be.

Breaking a habit requires a lifestyle change.

And lifestyle changes take time.

Just like if a someone wants to lose weight, it doesn’t happen overnight.

They have to commit to going to the gym and eating healthy regularly.

And with time they will gradually see the weight fall off.

That is essentially how it works when it comes down to breaking a bad habit.

You have to commit to making better choices and with time, that habit will be no more.

Or least, diminished enough that it won’t be something that you continuously do.

So that brings back the question posed at the beginning of how long does it take to a break a bad habit?

And the answer to that is usually it depends.

It’s not usually something that can be done just cold turkey.

Even though that is not impossible.

There are habits that people have been able to break in a short period of time.

But that is usually because that habit is something that person hasn’t been doing for very long.

How long have you have been engaging in that habit will definitely affect how long it will take to break a habit.

Because you can always start off making better choices but we all know that old habits die hard.

You can easily find yourself falling back into old bad habits when you are trying to change them.

The key to breaking bad habits is to replace them with better habits.

And commit to practicing these better habits.

It is very doable, but you have to stick with it until those bad habits are better habits that you are satisfied with.

I wrote a blog post on some of the bad habits that I have and how I was able to trade in some bad habits for better and good habits.

You can check that out through the link below.

I will catch you all next time!

Read More: Trading My Bad Habits For Good Habits

Love,

Just Jass

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Love, Just Jass

Here to make you “just” feel good through my experiences with mom-life, positive mental health habits, and self-development tips.