Last month I started the conversation about wellbeing. ‘Wellbeing’ refers to our ‘health, happiness, and relationships’. If you missed this introductory column, you can access it on the Stock Journal website, but as I said last month, you don’t need to throw out your old life but a few steps and tweaks can improve your quality of life enormously.

Before commencing some new habits, it is helpful to look at how you’ve established your old ones. Firstly, it is super difficult to stop an old habit and much easier to start a new one. There are basically four ‘pre-cursors’ that happen before you do that habit, once you have identified these four pre-cursors and are aware of them, it makes it so much easier to not ‘land’ in the same spot repeating that bad habit and then asking yourself ‘how did I get here again?’

Cues

What you don’t realise is that you are ‘cued’ into your habits by your home, workplace, friends, family, and lifestyle. Without even realising it, when you step into certain places and spaces, or around certain people, you are already taking the first step towards that habit.

Triggers

If you just suppress your bad habit, and not replace it by creating a new habit, once you are triggered by stress, tiredness, loneliness, overwhelm or hunger that you will default to that old habit - and in a massive way! What are your triggers?

Routines

It can take a while for lollypops to replace cigarettes, apples to replace bags of chips, or a mocktail or sparkling water to replace that glass of wine, so be patient! If there is a certain time of the day that you would do that bad habit, put yourself in a different place and space at this time. Try going for a walk, and before you leave put that replacement drink in a new spot so that when you come home you don’t sit in the ‘old’ spot (which is a cue and trigger for that bad habit) and reach for that ‘old’ habit (glass of wine).

Replace

Replace the drink, the cake, the cigarette, and the negative words TODAY! Don’t wait for Monday or next month, just take that first step by doing that new habit today.

Rewards

You already know if you feel uncomfortable about something, and if you know where that comes from this is your ‘why’. Write you ‘why’ down, say it out loud, put it on your phone wall paper, text it to a friend or put it in the bathroom so that you can stare that thing down.

Lastly, you are not the first one to have developed this bad habit you’re trying to kick, so shake off the shame and blame you feel about this and listen and learn about how others have kicked the same habit by reading books and article, or listening to podcasts, YouTube or Spotify.

The biggest steps of your life happen when you take the smallest steps in the right direction.