7 Bad Habits To Give Up Before You Destroy Your Life

Bad habits to give up for success and overall happiness

When it comes to bad habits to give up, we all think of giving up smoking, drinking, or junk food. But these bad habits are only present because we’re already practicing essential bad habits.

You see, behind every bad habit we practice there’s a reason we’re doing it. Meaning, there are even worse habits we don’t pay attention to, and that makes us go with the wrong choices.

In this post, I want to talk about 7 bad habits to give up before you completely destroy your life.

The greatest lessons from the greatest book

Start a new life quote Bad Habits To Give Up

I was 15 years old when I found self-help books exist. At that point, I was a very shy, depressed, and miserable teenager that didn’t expect much from the next day and never truly thought of the future.

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I was spending my summer holiday with my mother (my parents are divorced). One day, she was at work, and I was bored. I was looking through the books she had, and I start opening them one after another, to see how they start (I have a weird feeling if I’d like a book by reading the first few rows).

There was one book that instantly grabbed my attention, and I spend the rest of the day reading it and the rest of my holiday writing in a notepad the most important chapters of it (yes, whole chapters). My mindset was transformed for good.

That specific book turned out to be the single piece of content that changed my life and even today often refer to it for guidance, hope, and advice.

That book is The Greatest Salesman In The World, written by Og Mandino and published in 1968, an absolute best seller for its time with millions of copies sold all over the world, translated in 50 languages.

Are we slaves of our own habits?

“In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits.”

The Greatest Salesman In The World is a book about habits, how they affect us, and why we will always be their slaves.

You see, from the very moment we wake up, we follow our routines, take one automatic action after another, and before we go to sleep, we’ve practised hundreds of habits without knowing it.

We drink coffee instead of tea or just water; we take a certain route to work, we eat a specific type of food, shop from the same shops, talk in a particular manner with our friends and family, 90% of the cases we open the same app on our phones after unlocking it, we cook the same ten types of dishes, we always go to sleep at around the same time (no matter if it’s always very late or early enough to rest well) and so on.

We perform the same small daily actions every day and 95% of the thoughts we had yesterday will visit us today as well.

According to Og Mandino, we are slaves of our habits, and I couldn’t agree more.

And that’s a good thing

Why being slaves of our habits is a good thing?

If we are entitled to follow routines and do the same things over and over again daily, that means the choice isn’t if we do something every day or not. The real choice is which things we choose to do every day?

It’s not “If”, it’s “What” we do every day.

“In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. Thus, the first law I will obey, which precedeth all others is — I will form good habits and become their slave.”

Top 7 Bad Habits To Give Up

Let’s get to the main part of the habits you want to break, so you find happiness, inner peace and success. Trust me on this, if you don’t quit these 7 habits you’re doomed.

1. Negative Self-talk

Badmouthing someone else is bad manners. Negative self-talk is self-destructive.

Negative thoughts and self-talk are limiting you and taking your focus away from what you’re good at.

It’s truly one of the worst habits any of us could practice.

The rule here is very simple: If you wouldn’t tell it to your best friend, why tell it yourself?

Very often we’re kinder to other people than we are to ourselves. Once we’re caught in the negative self-talk, we keep coming up with proofs of how bad, miserable, worthless and incapable we are of doing things right.

It’s very easy for our ego to find the right words and make us feel insignificant and useless. After all, the ego is the only one that knows where to hit, so it hurts for as long as possible.

However, such behaviour is destructive and brings unhappiness and misery.

Negative self-talk truly deserves the first place on this list of bad habits, and you want to take action on it if you practice it.

How to stop negative self-talk?

Find out why do you have a negative attitude towards yourself? What is the reason you’re so angry with yourself?
Start noticing when the negative self-talk appears and analyse it – is there any truth in it? Is there an opportunity for self-improvement? If yes, start working on developing a good habit.
Every time you catch yourself you’re practising negative self-talk, replace it with a positive one. Don’t punish yourself for doing it, but instead act like it didn’t happen.
Do it as often as you need and if you feel you’re failing in it – start all over again.

2. Lack of self-love and self-awareness

Love The Light - Self Love And Awareness Quotes

I am firm that over 90% of our problems in our personal relationships with ourselves, our family, friends, and the other people around us, is the lack of self-love.

As a person who’s always struggled with self-love, I can guarantee you don’t even know you don’t love yourself enough.

It takes lots of self-observation and self-awareness to get to the point when you admit you indeed neglect yourself and that something must change.

Staying in a toxic relationship, low self-confidence, being too shy, hanging with the wrong people, staying on a job you hate, staying quiet when you know you should speak up, being depressed and moody, anxiousness and so on – it all starts with lack of self-love.

The habit of loving yourself isn’t easy to learn, and often we get so consumed with the world around us that we ignore the need we have inside of us. We are so eager to help others that we forget to help ourselves first.

Yet, it all starts with us and within us, so quit that bad habits and learn how to love yourself.

How to start loving yourself more?

Create a self-love journal and keep track of your journey.
Create a list of things or activities that make you feel you’re practicing self-love. Make time for these activities.
See these habits that will help you love yourself a little more and chose the best for you. Add them to your list.
Make time for yourself and practice self-care daily – when we love something or someone, we look after them.
Learn to prioritize yourself and change your mindset if you believe that self-prioritizing is selfish.
If you feel you’re failing, just start all over again.

3. Perfectionism

Quote on taking the attitude of a struden - Bad habits to give up Perfectionism

No one is perfect, as I mentioned above.

Have you noticed that we are ok with other people’s imperfections, but when it comes to our imperfections, we either ignore them and pretend they don’t exist, deny them or forcefully try to change as soon as possible.

Perfection doesn’t exist, and the mere thought we should strive for it is honestly self-destructive.

We never sit to write the book we want to write, sing the song in our hearts, pain that painting we crave to paint, ask for the job of our dreams, smile at the mirror or simply relax and enjoy life… just because none of it is perfect.

But that’s ok. Things shouldn’t be perfect. In fact, life isn’t perfect, and that’s what makes it unique and valuable.

Improving ourselves and changing our lives for better is an entirely different thing.

While perfectionism is in the base of chronicle unhappiness and dissatisfaction of life, improving ourselves and striving for a better life is the natural way of evolution.

Before I move to the next bad habits, let me mention the cliche that we are all perfectly imperfect and we are just where we should be looking and behaving the way we should. It’s all about learning our lessons and enjoying life in the process.

Inside Of My Happiness Journal

Inside Of My Happiness | Journal for Living an Intentional Life

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Journaling has so many benefits, and you've always wanted to stick to it but never did. It looks and sounds complicated. You think that there are some rules you know nothing of and can't see the magic everyone talks of.

Inside of My Happiness is your go-to journal for the morning and the evening. Get inspired in the mornings, reflect on yourself in the evening. As simple as that.

How to release perfectionism?

While in some cases, perfectionism is considered as a mental disorder, very often it’s a matter of changing the mindset and your attitude towards things in life.

Learn to recognise perfectionism.
Catch your thoughts of a perfectionist and write them down. Explore if they’re true or just a well-masked fence to hide behind.
Turn your perfectionism and the statement it comes with into positive ones. For example, change “My boss won’t be happy and will think I’m lazy if I take any sick days” into “My physical health is my priority, and I know that my boss will show understanding.”
Understand that done is better than perfect, and every time you doubt if something is perfect, it’s just a fear you need to overcome.
If you fail, just start all over again.

4. Never reflecting on life

One of the main reasons we get stuck in life is the lack of self-reflection and self-evaluation.

Many of us live in the outer world and forget to explore and take care of our inner world too.

Or maybe we are afraid of what we’ll find if we start self-evaluation.

Never reflecting on life means we lose the ability to revise and correct ourselves where we need to evolve. We rob ourselves of the possibility to grow and develop into our best selves. We ignore the bad things we’ve experienced, but in the process, we never see the good we’ve done.

How to start reflecting on your life?

Create a habit of reflecting on your days first. If that’s something completely new for you, I recommend you starting with simple journaling. It could be a few sentences a day or a few pages – it’s all up to you.
You might want to journal over some of these self-reflecting and life-reflecting questions.
Think about your day, your work, your life and your relationships with others. What would improve them if needed, and what makes them unique so you could reinforce it?
Practice often.

5. Caring what other people think

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.” Richard Feynman

Let’s be honest; we usually care what other people think. We post stories online, quotes and make live videos to squeeze reaction out of the world. We seek approval from our very first years on this Earth, and we are encouraged to strive for it throughout our childhood.

Therefore, once released in adulthood, we forget we are not entitled to please people, and as long we don’t harm anyone, we are free to do whatever our heart desires.

Why do we care so much what others think? Why do we need their approval on our diet, our body, our makeup, our partners, our love life, our clothes, our nails, the books we read, the podcasts we listen, the career we chase or not, the quotes that touch us…?

Does all that matter to them as much as it matters to us?

How to stop caring what other people think?

Admit that you care what other people think and certain people’s opinion matter more to you than your own.
Choose if you want to live in a way that makes you happy or makes other people happy.
People that judge your way of life are doing simply because they don’t understand it, not because it’s bad.
Accept that you have no control over other people feelings, opinion, judgments, way of thinking and life perception. Also, admit that in the same way, they don’t have control over your life values, feelings, a vision of life and choices.
Understand that it isn’t your job to prove them you’re right and they’re wrong. What truly matters is that what you do doesn’t harm anyone and makes you happy.
Just leave them be.
I recommend reading The Four Amendments for a better perspective on the matter.

6. Lack of self-belief

As much as the lack of self-belief is tightly connected to the lack of self-love, I decided it needs a separate point on this list of bad habits to give up.

As Gabby Bernstein says, everything comes from either a place of love or a place of fear. The lack of belief in yourself comes from a place of fear of failure.

We don’t believe we could do something because we think we’ll fail at it and often that’s 70% of the reasons why we don’t succeed in life.

But failure is in the base of success and failure is in the base of self-belief.

The best thing though is that the lack of self-belief is a habit and it can be changed, moderated or removed. We should go for the things that scare us and go for them as often as possible until the fear shrinks.

How to believe in yourself more?

Work on changing your opinion on self-belief. Just because you lack self-belief for the last 25 years, it doesn’t mean you should keep lacking it for another 50 years.
Challenge yourself daily. If something pushes you over the limitation you’ve created for yourself, go for it.
Do it every day.
If something scares you – go for it.
If you’re sure you’ll fail in something – go for it.
The best way to stop fear is by experiencing it.
Do it all over again.

7. Giving up too easily

Never give up too easily Quote on limitations

As I like to say, we live in an Instant World.

We drink instant coffee and get instant access to information, we want to see a friend, and we face-call them in less than ten seconds. We want to visit a place, and we immediately get all the information we need to get there. We aren’t used to waiting and be patient at all. Actually, we are always told that we shouldn’t wait for anything in this world, and we have the right to access everything the moment we want it.

Yes, but it isn’t always so easy, is it?

Often, the important things in life require time and effort – both qualities we aren’t used to working with.

And once we pass a certain time of working and waiting, we start getting impatient and frustrated. We push the limits too hard or give up too quickly. And everything fails. We fail at the first attempt, and we forget that there could always be a second and a third one.

In fact, we could attempt as many times as we liked, because the only limitation of how many times we’ll try to achieve a certain result exists in our heads. We come up with the number, and we stop ourselves. We give up.

How to stop giving up too easily?

Instead of listing the ways to give up on that bad habit, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes of Og Mandino’s book:

“I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail, I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult… I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.”

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