This post contains some of the best bad habits quotes.
Bad Habits Quotes
1. “All your bad habits from picking your nose to yelling at the dog to actually hurting others.” – Richard O’Connor
2. “As we practice bad habits more and more, they become like railroad tracks— the only way to get from here to there, from stress to relief—and we ignore the fact that there are much healthier and more direct ways of getting what we need. So under stress we take a drink, or have a snack, or pick a fight, or get depressed, all without awareness that we have made a decision; our bad habits operate unconsciously.” – Richard O’Connor
3. “Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have the energy to do anything else. Worrying about your health makes you feel anxious, which causes you to smoke to ease your anxiety, which makes your health even worse and soon you’re feeling more anxious. It’s a downward spiral, a runaway train of bad habits.” – James Clear
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4. “Bad habits die hard. It seems as if we have two brains, one wanting the best for us, and the other digging in its heels in a desperate, often unconscious, effort to hold on to the status quo.” – Richard O’Connor
5. “Bad habits have net negative outcomes. Smoking a cigarette may reduce stress right now (that’s how it’s serving you), but it’s not a healthy long-term behavior.” – James Clear
6. “Bad habits like procrastinating, eating too much, or not getting enough exercise seem to be just part of being human. If these habits don’t go too far, they won’t hurt you much, but they can make you feel guilty and can eat away at your self-esteem.” – Richard O’Connor
7. “Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.” – James Clear
8. “But there simply is no way to stop a bad habit (other than smoking, which seems to be only a pure addiction) without facing what it means and what it’s done to you. If you have ever learned something that takes practice—typing, playing a video game, driving a car—you can use the same methods to get to know yourself and overcome your damaging and unwanted behavior.” – Richard O’Connor
9. “Focused attention and practice, repeated over and over, will change the brain’s reward system, so that bad habits will lose their appeal and be replaced by new, self-constructive behavior patterns.” – Richard O’Connor
10. “Habits are a double-edged sword. Bad habits can cut you down just as easily as good habits can build you up.” – James Clear
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11. “Habits die hard. Each time we engage in a bad habit, we make it more likely we’ll do it again in the future.” – Richard O’Connor
12. “If self-hate isn’t part of your original motive for self-destructive behavior, when you fall into bad habits you will end up hating yourself anyhow: You’re so weak! Have you no discipline? No will power? You’ll never amount to anything if you keep on being so stupid!” – Richard O’Connor
13. “Judging is a bad habit that you can stop with practice. If you feel oppressed, ask yourself if it’s really because of current circumstances or because it’s a feeling you carry around with you. If it is a result of the current situation, start working to change it. If it’s because you feel oppressed most of the time, what’s that about? You’re probably stuffing a lot of anger away and feeling guilty about it, even if it’s unconscious at this point.” – Richard O’Connor
14. “Mindfulness meditation practice helps develop a skill for self-observation that neurologically disengages us from old automatic bad habits of emotional response. It activates regions of the brain that facilitate better, more creative ways of responding to stress.” – Richard O’Connor
15. “Most of us find ourselves too often repeating the same mistakes, stuck in bad habits, and few of us understand why. Procrastination, lack of assertion, disorganization, smoking, overworking, poor sleep habits, lack of consideration, depressed shopping, Internet addiction—all the way up through drug addiction and deliberate self-harm.” – Richard O’Connor
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16. “Neuroscientists know now that bad habits have a physical existence in the structure of the brain; they become the default circuits when we are faced with temptation.” – Richard O’Connor
17. “Nobody died from starvation on a diet, and most people don’t really experience a lot of discomfort. The same goes for giving up any bad habit. You may have a couple of rough days, but they won’t last. And pretty soon you’ll start to get some good feelings—pride, self-respect—from sticking with your regimen.” – Richard O’Connor
18. “Once you understand how the brain prioritizes rewards, the answers become clear: the consequences of bad habits are delayed while the rewards are immediate. Smoking might kill you in ten years, but it reduces stress and eases your nicotine cravings now. Overeating is harmful in the long run but appetizing in the moment. Sex—safe or not—provides pleasure right away. Disease and infection won’t show up for days or weeks, even years.” – James Clear
19. “One of our greatest challenges in changing habits is maintaining awareness of what we are actually doing. This helps explain why the consequences of bad habits can sneak up on us. We need a “point-and-call” system for our personal lives.” – James Clear
20. “One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.” – James Clear
21. “Other bad habits may impact your work and social life—avoiding the spotlight, not being assertive, procrastinating, staying stuck in a bad job or relationship. Or you may do things that hurt you directly—too much drinking or drugging, cutting yourself, taking dangerous chances, getting into fights, developing an eating disorder.” – Richard O’Connor
22. “Our old bad habits become the brain’s default circuits when we are faced with temptation, fatigue, or stress. Rewiring the brain to develop and reinforce healthier circuitry takes consistent practice, but that’s all it takes.” – Richard O’Connor
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23. “So, overcoming bad habits isn’t always easy, especially those that have been with you for years. but let’s look now at what new science has learned that will make it much less difficult for you.” – Richard O’Connor
24. “Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.” – James Clear
25. “the costs of your good habits are in the present. The costs of your bad habits are in the future.” – James Clear
26. “The first step to changing bad habits is to be on the lookout for them. If you feel like you need extra help, then you can try Pointingand-Calling in your own life. Say out loud the action that you are thinking of taking and what the outcome will be.” – James Clear
27. “The key to finding and fixing the causes of your bad habits is to reframe the associations you have about them. It’s not easy, but if you can reprogram your predictions, you can transform a hard habit into an attractive one.” – James Clear
28. “The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behavior. If you want to prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviors, then adding an instant cost to the action is a great way to reduce their odds.” – James Clear
29. “There are no good habits or bad habits. There are only effective habits. That is, effective at solving problems. All habits serve you in some way —even the bad ones—which is why you repeat them.” – James Clear
Related: Am I Self-Destructive Quiz
30. “This is one of the forces behind the undertow —it’s so difficult to overcome bad habits because they are etched in the brain. They don’t go away as we practice better behavior; they just fall into disuse, so they can easily be revived. We don’t tear up the old tracks when we build new ones; we just let them get rusty and weedy.” – Richard O’Connor
31. “This is the secret to self-control. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.” – James Clear
32. “Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.” – James Clear
33. “To make bad habits unsatisfying, your best option is to make them painful in the moment. Creating a habit contract is a straightforward way to do exactly that” – James Clear
34. “We can make good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible.” – James Clear
35. “We repeat bad habits because they serve us in some way, and that makes them hard to abandon. The best way I know to overcome this predicament is to increase the speed of the punishment associated with the behavior. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences.” – James Clear
36. “We seem to be perpetually drawn back to our old, bad habits as if we’re caught in a tractor beam.” – Richard O’Connor
37. “When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.” – James Clear
38. “When we’re trying to break a bad habit by practicing more constructive behavior (eating right, exercising, being assertive), we can easily be discouraged by a bad day. We can give up and feel that we’ve wasted a lot of effort, but that’s not the case. Every day you practiced left its traces in the brain; you can get back on the horse after a fall and expect it soon to be as easy and rewarding as ever” – Richard O’Connor
39. “WHY IS IT so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones? Few things can have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily habits. And yet it is likely that this time next year you’ll be doing the same thing rather than something better.” – James Clear
40. “With enough practice, though, mindfulness becomes an unconscious habit. It’s a vital skill that can help greatly no matter what bad habits you’re trying to overcome.” – Richard O’Connor
Related: Impulsivity Test: Am I Impulsive?
References
- Portions of this article were adapted from the book Atomic Habits, © 2018 by James Clear. All rights reserved.
- Portions of this article were adapted from the book Rewire, © 2014 by Richard O’Connor. All rights reserved.
