Reduce Stress First Before You Start Building Better Habits.
Your bad habits are stressing you. It sucks. Worse, the more stress you get, the harder it becomes to acquire new habits. It may be best to deal with your stress levels first.
As Alex Korb, PhD in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles, explains, there is a very real neurological reason why your brain cannot develop better habits when you are under stress. The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that focuses on long-term habits and can suppress your urge to watch Netflix and drink beer instead of doing work. The more stress you get, the harder it becomes for this part of your brain to do its job. So, naturally, the less stressed you are, the easier it is to develop better habits:
I have a friend who always says, “Stress turns off the prefrontal cortex.” Stress changes the dynamics of this conversation. It weakens the prefrontal cortex. This part of your brain does not have infinite resources. He cannot be eternally vigilant, so while he is oblivious, your striped body is like, “Let’s go eat a cookie. Let’s go have a beer. Anything you can do to reduce stress will help increase your prefrontal cortex’s control over your habits.
Granted, this is not easy and unfair (your bad habits can be the cause of a large part of your stress, which makes the problem somewhat insular), but it helps give you a plan for how to start solving problems. If you are overwhelmed with unnecessary responsibilities, start downsizing. If they are required, ask for help. As you can work on stress relief, you can begin to reallocate that mental capacity to form better habits.
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