We all have a bad habit or two that may feel hard to break. These 5 bad habits cause us stress, anxiety and can affect our health in a negative way. Let’s declutter them by the end of the year.
Adding a good habit can improve your health and lifestyle. Likewise, decluttering a bad habit and removing it from your life can make things better too. Since you are probably here to simplify your life, reframe “breaking bad habits” as “decluttering bad habits.” It’s a small shift that can make a big difference. While you declutter coffee cups, shoes that don’t fit and other clutter, throw a bad habit into the decluttering mix.
You can make your own list of bad habits that you want to remove from your life or pick a few from the list below. Some of these bad habits may not even feel like a conscious choice but something that has just been a part of your life. Just because you’ve been doing something for a long time doesn’t mean you have to keep to doing it. Give yourself permission to change things up for the better. If you aren’t sure if decluttering a bad habit will make things better, turn it into a challenge or an experiment. Quit drinking for 90 days or try a shopping ban. This temporary approach can be a bridge to letting go with less stress. Then you can make a decision based on facts instead of fear.
5 Bad Habits to Declutter By The End of The Year
These might not apply to you but if they do, take a look and imagine what would change, and what benefits you’d experience if you decluttered these bad habits by the end of the year.
1. Start with the bad habit of staying up late in the name of too much to do.
Sometimes you have to stay up late. You might have a job with late hours or you have to pick up one of your kids from an event. Usually though, we have a bad habit of staying up late in the name of too much to do. If you’ve ever thought, “I’ll just do one more thing” and then realized it was hours past your bed time, you are familiar with this bad habit. One more thing is never one more thing.
The way to declutter this bad habit right out of your life is to set a reasonable bedtime and then honor it. There will always be more to do. You may never feel “caught up” and the moment you do, you’ll discover there is more to do. Prioritize your bedtime and sleep so you have the energy and clarity to do the things you need and want to do. I usually go to bed at 8:00 pm. I know that’s very early for most people and some nights it feels too early for me. It means not doing it all, leaving things undone and reminding myself that doing more things doesn’t make me a better person, it makes me a tired person.
2. Don’t break your boundaries just because other people don’t like them.
Your boundaries and other people liking them are not mutually exclusive. We thinking what we need is for other people to respect and honor our boundaries. That’s lovely when it happens but all that really has to happen is that we uphold and respect our own boundaries. Sometimes we set a boundary and then in a weird, fawning, people pleasing kind of way, we think, “nevermind” just to keep everyone happy. I think we forget that doing that requires complete self-abandonment.
Instead, break that bad habit and remind yourself of what actually happens in a healthy boundary situation. When I set and share a boundary, I’m not saying, “You can’t do that.” I’m saying, “This is what I’ll do when you do that.” When people really push back and make you feel bad about your boundaries, remember this saying, “The only people upset with you having boundaries are the ones who benefitted from you having none.”
3. Buying things you don’t need is a bad habit worth decluttering.
Declutter the bad habit of buying things you don’t need. Before your next impulse purchase, reflect on how you feel about past impulse purchases. More stuff never made you a better person or change your life in any meaningful way. It doesn’t make you feel happier (for long) and eventually you are struggling to declutter the thing you never really wanted in the first place.
Buying things isn’t bad or wrong, but shopping to feel a certain way, or to prove yourself to others or because you think something will make you feel happier or more successful doesn’t work (at least not in my experience). I recognize the short-term “high” that comes with buying something you never knew you wanted but now must have but the way that feeling fades reminds me it’s just not worth it.
4. That bad habit of always saying, “YES” has to go.
This one is for the people pleasers and anyone who struggles to say, “No, I don’t want to do that.” or “No, I’m not the right person to help.” or “I have something else going on.” The only way to protect your time and energy is by saying, “No” more often. We’ve all heard the saying, no is a complete sentence.
When you declutter this bad habit keep these two helpful reminders nearby.
- It’s easier to take back a “no” than to take back a “yes.”
- You are allowed to say, “no” even when you aren’t busy.
5. Declutter the bad habit of endless scrolling.
I’ve been lost in the bad habit of endless scrolling. It’s addictive, it feels good before it feels bad and there is always a scroll at the tip of your fingers. We think it will help us relax or have fun but neither of those things happen. In The Power of Fun, Catherine Price writes that bingeing on television, doomscrolling the news, or posting photos to social media isn’t true fun, it’s fake fun.
Price says, “Fake fun is a term I came up with to describe products and services that are marketed to us as fun but that aren’t actually fun in the sense that they don’t actually produce playfulness, connection or flow. The biggest culprit here is definitely social media or passive consumption past the point of enjoyment.” Her TED Talk will inspire you to get off your phone. To declutter the bad habit of the endless scroll, identify what is actually more fun than social media. If you aren’t sure, here are 27 things that are more fun than social media.
Decluttering these bad habits will help you create more time, space and ease in your life. While you can declutter these habits anytime, giving yourself a deadline, like the end of the year will encourage you to walk into the new year, lighter and more confident. It can also reduce the pressure of new year’s resolutions or other anxiety around making a big change knowing that you’ve already decluttered your bad habits. Now you can just sit back and enjoy a gentle January.
