When Are Bad Habits Helpful?

Some bad habits can actually turn out to be helpful. They may cause trouble most of the time. Yet, there are those instances when they seem to fit the situation perfectly. Since most people have at least some bad habits, it is probably good that they have a helpful side.

Some people have bad habits with regards to pointing out others mistakes. They are constantly telling their friends or family members what they are doing wrong. It gets annoying and frustrating for the person being picked on. Quite a bit of resentment can build up over this.

However, there may come a time when the person will actually point out bad habits you have not been aware of before. They may stop you from making a huge mistake. You may not be inclined to fall at their feet and thank them, but you may be glad you heard their criticism nonetheless.

Procrastination is usually one of the most common bad habits. People put off doing what they know they need to do. They plan to do it, just not today. Procrastination can prove to be helpful if the situation changes. If you were planning to water your garden you might procrastinate and put it off until tomorrow. If it rains unexpectedly that night, you have saved both effort and water.

If you complain too much, people will tell you that you have too many bad habits. It does create a negative environment when someone is constantly seeing the worst in everything. However, sometimes the only times you can get anything done are when you complain.

Some bosses manage by the theory that the person that complains the loudest is the person who needs the most attention. In other words, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. When you complain in this situation, you accomplish something.

Working too hard is generally a bad habit. It is bad for your relationships and it is bad for your health. You feel that you will not succeed unless you put in overtime. Mostly, this is not true. Yet, there are times when the extra work can pay off. This is true especially if you allow yourself to indulge this bad habit for only the duration of a short project.

If you are too stubborn, you will be accused of bad habits like demanding to have things the way you see fit. You will not give in until you are satisfied that things are going as they should. This is usually a bad habit. Sometimes, though, it takes the form of tenacity. This is a positive attribute that makes it possible for you to hold on through the hardest of times.

Breaking the law almost always involves bad habits. Theft, drug peddling and use, violence, and many more bad habits come into play. On the other hand, some of the world's greatest heroes have broken the laws of their own countries.

They did it in civil disobedience of laws they deemed unjust or inhumane. The world would be a different place if these people had been afraid of having these "bad habits." That is why not all habits can be strictly labeled bad or good. It has to go by the situation.

Support Groups for People with Bad Habits

There are support groups all over the world for people with bad habits. These groups provide a framework by which the person with bad habits can get better. They are available to anyone who wants to attend.

Alcoholics Anonymous is the gold standard for support groups. There people with bad habits relating to alcohol can meet and discuss their bad habits. They can talk about their experiences and share their hopes. They can gain strength by spending time with people whose goal is also to banish their bad habits.

Alcoholics Anonymous practices the Twelve-Step program for those whose bad habits have brought them to seek help. The system is designed to guide alcoholics through their despair and into sobriety. It is a rigorous program, but it is worth the work if you come out on the other side without your bad habits.

Another group the uses the Twelve-Step program for gaining control over bad habits is Overeaters Anonymous. Contrary to what the name implies, it is not just for people who eat too much. The largest number of members of any one group is those who overeat. However, it is also for those with bulimia or anorexia. It is for anyone who is "powerless over food."

This group holds meetings as AA does. It also uses tests and other tools to help people evaluate the extent of their bad habits and depression. The Twelve-Step program leads them to work on their bad habits from perspectives that are physical, emotional, and spiritual. It has helped many people to gain control over their eating disorders.

Yet another group is based on the Twelve-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is Narcotics Anonymous. It is for people with bad habits with all kinds of drugs. You can be involved in the program no matter what kind(s) of drugs you used.

It does not matter if you used a few times or you used constantly for years. The important thing is what you want to do about it. Narcotics Anonymous provides you with a way to deal with these destructive bad habits in your life if you will do the work.

There are all kinds of smoking cessation support groups to help people quit their bad habits with smoking. There are groups at medical centers. There are groups at colleges. Some groups meet at community centers.

There are even smoking cessation groups that meet online. The websites give quite a bit of helpful information about your bad habits. They often will have a blog where people can compare notes about how their recovery from nicotine is going. Then, there are live chat support groups.

There are not support groups for all the bad habits that people have. No one is going to go around smacking your hand and saying,"Do not drum your fingers!" At least, they will not do it as a support group. Yet, for many serious bad habits, there is help. In some cases, you will have to drive across town. In other cases, it is as near as your computer.

How to Break Bad Habits

There are hundreds of bad habits and hundreds of ways to break them. if you need help, there are books, support groups, and counselors to help you. Mostly you can take a common sense approach and get the job done.

If bragging is one of your bad habits, you could either be insecure or overly proud. It usually makes the other person feel bad, or they resent you. You can get a handle on this bad habit if you stop for a few seconds before you talk. Give yourself time to think about others and how this will sound to them. Think about whether you are telling it to them, or to yourself.

Another one of these bad habits is name dropping. Again, you may be insecure. Most people will not take it in a friendly way. Try to tell your same stories but without the names to stop yourself from doing this. You might say, "My friend Brad" instead of "my friend Brad Pitt," or something like that.

Cursing is one of those bad habits that can start at an early age. You may curse so much that you are unaware that you are doing it much of the time. The first thing to do is to pay attention. Whenever you say inappropriate words, put money in a jar. Even if it is your coffee money, put it in there. Also, you might want to think about anger management classes if your cursing is done in a hostile way.

If you have the bad habit of chewing with your mouth open, there may be a physical cause. It is disgusting at the dinner table and might make you look bad at a dinner meeting. Perhaps all you need is a nasal decongestant. Maybe if you can breathe through your nose, you will close your mouth.

You may be a whiner. This is one of those bad habits that annoy people from the time you are a child until you are old or until you quit it. It comes out in the sound of your voice and the expression on your face. However, it is rooted in a negative, doom and gloom attitude. Look on the positive side of things, and you will find yourself whining less.

Gossips are notorious for starting trouble in any group to which they belong. These people often find their lives so boring that they cannot find anything else to talk about. Their only topic of discussion is other people's business. These people can break this bad habit by finding new interests to think and therefore talk about.

Nail biting is a bad habit for people of all ages. It damages the fingertips and nails. It is not a very sanitary practice. People do it out of nervousness, and most of them would like to quit. In past times, people would wear gloves, but people do not wear them much anymore. You can buy nail polish that tastes bad, though. That seems to help at times.

You can find a way to overcome any addiction or bad habit. Some of them are trivial in the scheme of things. Others are deadly serious. If you find the right help for your situation, you can stop your bad habits.

Emotional Bad Habits

The question of whether moods constitute bad habits is an interesting one. Many mood disorders have been identified. These and other psychological problems are seen by some as strictly bad habits.

In fact, it has been shown that continuing to dwell in your present mood perpetuates it. When you decide to pretend you are happy, studies show that you may actually improve your mood in time. This is not a hard and fast rule, but there is some indication that people do have some control over their moods.

Moodiness, for example, may be more than bad habits for many. It may be bipolar disorder or some other psychiatric problem. However, for some it may just be that they are giving in to every feeling that comes along. They have the bad habits of not trying to have any control over their whims.

Being pessimistic is one of the bad habits that can also be seen as a symptom of depression. Yet, for many, it is just a habit of thought. They may tell themselves that pessimism is a win-win way of thinking.

If things go right, you win. If things go wrong, you were correct, so you win. These people can improve their moodiness by looking at the positive side of things in the beginning.

Being in a worrying mood is similar to being pessimistic. The difference between the two bad habits is that when you worry, you become obsessed and dread upcoming events. If you have the bad habit of worrying, you can slowly train yourself out of it, especially if you have the right kind of help.

Codependency is not exactly a mood, but it is an emotional state. It is a set of bad habits that encourages a loved one to do harmful behavior. You do not want your son to be an alcoholic, for example.

However, you constantly make excuses for his behavior to others. If you want him to get better, you have to stand up and decide to stop with your bad habits. You have to hold him accountable for his actions.

If you have hypochondria, you have an emotionally painful bad habit. Certainly, a person with hypochondria needs psychological help. However, the treatment that person will receive will probably center on helping them change their bad habits of thought. They will learn new ways to think about illness and their own bodies. This will give them some control over their emotions.

If you do a lot of attention seeking, you have bad habits that you can learn to abandon. This could relate back to something in your past. Perhaps, you were ignored as a child because there was some other needier person in the home. You learned bad habits of getting attention by annoying means. Taming this bad habit requires acknowledgement of it, and possibly professional help.

Bad habits that relate to emotional states are often hard to break. Sometimes you need help to overcome them if you cannot do it on your own. The sooner you stop doing your emotional bad habits, the happier your life will be.

Bad Habits Related to Health

Bad habits can often damage your health. They can make you feel unwell. They can have long-term affects on your physical condition. If you want to live a long life and healthy life, there may be some bad habits you need to overcome.

Many of the bad habits that make you feel poorly are related to eating. A growing number of people in the US are obese. This is mainly due to the fact that they have developed the bad habit of overeating.

This can lead to numerous conditions and diseases. Heart disease, diabetes, bone and joint distress, and many other physical conditions can result. Even some forms of cancer occur more often in obese people. What is more, very obese people are often bedridden and cannot care for themselves.

Some people do not have the habit of overeating in general. They just eat the wrong things when they do eat. They may eat fast food at every meal. This can literally make you sick. The high quantities of fats, sugars, and starches in fast foods make them very unhealthy.

Other foods can be bad habits to eat as well. Other fried foods cause health problems. Foods that are low in fiber lack a substance the body needs to function well. It is a bad habit to avoid this. Foods high in sugar are bad habits, if not addictions. They affect the metabolism in drastic ways, causing an imbalance in energy and insulin.

People have trouble knowing what kinds of electrolytes they need. Some people have bad habits when it comes to salt. They will salt all the food on their plate as soon as they sit down. They will not taste any of it first. Too much salt can lead to hypertension.

Even if you eat right, you will be weak if you do not exercise. Living a sedentary lifestyle is a bad habit. You may not have much choice about how much movement is allowed at your job. That does not mean that you cannot get out and get your heart beating before or after work.

In fact, if you do not have time to exercise outside of work, you probably have another bad habit in the health area. Overworking is a cause for several illnesses. High blood pressure, heart disease, and others can plague you if you do not stop and take time to relax at home.

A discussion of bad health habits would not be complete without reference to smoking, drinking, and drugs. Each of these has dire health risks that are known by most people. If you smoke, you might get lung cancer. You might also get COPD, another breathing disorder. If you drink, you might have liver failure. Drugs can do all kinds of damage, including damage to your brain.

Others care about your health, as you should care, too. It may be difficult, but kicking your bad habits and making yourself healthy again is a worthy goal to aspire to. Why not start today?

Bad Habits in the Workplace

Everyone suffers when someone on the job has bad habits in the workplace. Bad habits can make for an environment that is unfriendly, unproductive, or even unsafe. You can only correct your bad habits in the workplace if you recognize them.

One of the most noticeable bad habits in the workplace is tardiness. Some people just have a habit of being late to everything. They are late to arrive, late back from break, and late back from lunch. This not only puts them in jeopardy of losing their jobs. It can affect the productivity of the whole crew or office.

Absenteeism is another bad habit that people can fall into easily. A new trend is to make all accumulated days off the same. Sick days, personal days, and vacation days are lumped together. You just have a set number of days off and it is up to you how you take them.

The trouble with this system is that too many people have bad habits about using the days off. They get used to taking off whenever they feel like it. Before they know it, all their days off are gone. Then, when they really have an emergency or illness, they have to miss work without pay. In the meantime, their workload is being handled by someone else.

People often have bad habits in the workplace when it comes to paperwork. They do not do proper accounting on their expense reports. They do not keep the receipts that are needed by their company. They fail to keep mileage records on their company cars accurately. This makes the company's accounting department have to work harder.

Many workers have an aversion to doing paperwork at all. They have bad habits of not filling out jobsite reports as needed. If they do special business reports as requested, they may have bad habits about not turning them in on time.

Clean work spaces can help people get more work done. However, many people have bad habits when it comes to keeping their desks and offices neat. They may have a certain kind of organization if they have stacks of papers on their desks. Yet, if their desk is full of half empty pop cans and crumpled up fast food bags, it cannot help anything.

People often get into the bad habit of losing things. They may lose important paperwork. The paperwork may be critical contracts for a major deal the company is involved with. If your bad habits take over, you can cost the company everything.

People in other kinds of jobs can get into the habit of losing tools. They do not pay enough attention when they lay down their tools. When they get ready to clean up for the day, they have no recollection of where they put a particular tool, if they remember using it at all. This is a bad habit that amounts to laziness in thinking.

If you want to make an impression at work, get a grip on your bad habits. The way you work will be a result of the habits you bring to the table. It is the good habits that make you succeed.

Bad Habits in Sports

Sports are fun to watch and to play, as long as you curb your bad habits. To be successful at any sport, you need to develop the behavior patterns that will lead to winning. A part of this is avoiding certain bad habits.

Taking care of the body should be of utmost importance to anyone who wants to play sports seriously. Smoking and drinking are bad habits that do not mix well with sports. Smoking cuts a person's breathing capabilities. It makes the person gasp for air after a short practice run.

Drinking alcohol is another bad habit for athletes. It dehydrates the body and slows coordination. However, drinking other fluids is necessary. Some sports players have the bad habits of not keeping themselves hydrated. This should not happen, since there are usually plenty of water and electrolyte-rich drinks available at the event.

Sports players are often entrenched in their bad habits of not getting enough sleep. They are wound up after practices or games and do not feel like going to bed early. They get up to start their training on an early schedule. If they push themselves too hard, they will find that these bad habits will end up taking them out of the game.

An athlete should never start to play without some sort of stretching or warm-up exercises. Yet, bad habits often prevail. People begin doing their sport without the slightest thought to getting ready. This is important even for a professional athlete. It often happens, though, that an amateur athlete will be more careless about. They do not make it their business to do everything right.

Sometimes people who play sports occasionally think they can be athletes without much practice. They have the bad habit of doing nothing for weeks or months on end. Then, they jump in and do strenuous sports activities. They believe that they do not need to keep practiced and in shape. This can result in injury and exhaustion.

Not using proper safety equipment is a bad habit in sports. In professional sports, this equipment is required. If an NFL football player were to make it onto the field without his protective gear, he would be fined heavily.

In amateur games, people are not so careful about using safety equipment. They may play golf in slick dress shoes instead of golf shoes. This may cause them an injury if they slip and fall. A bicyclist may have the bad habit of not using a helmet if she is an amateur. This can be a dangerous mistake.

One bad habit people have in sports is not being team players. If a person tries to take all the glory, the team comes to resent him and will not back him up the way they should. If the person works with the team, the team will be a cohesive unit that can accomplish great things.

Sports can be fun activities or a great way to make a living. Either way, the way you conduct yourself will make all the difference in how you enjoy the game. So, suit up and leave your bad habits on the bench.

Bad Habits Can Be Expensive

Bad habits can be very expensive to maintain. Never mind that they are annoying to others. Do not think about the pain you cause yourself, if you do not want to. Just remember that your bad habits are hitting you where it hurts-in your wallet.

Smoking has always been a bad habit to have. In past times, people smoked more cigarettes, but cigarettes were cheaper. Now, many people have cut down on the number of cigarettes they smoke per day. Yet, those few are more expensive now than the many were back then. That's accounting for inflation, too.

This is because lawmakers have seen fit to put large taxes on cigarettes. In many areas, the taxes are set to go up even higher. Some states are planning hikes of $10 per carton. If that will not stop you from smoking, what will?

Alcohol, too, is a bad habit that is subject to sin tax. It depends on how expensive your taste in alcohol is whether it will cost you more or less. Usually, most people will go to drinking less expensive alcohol as their dependency grows. However, it is not unusual for someone to go to a bar on a Friday night and spend their paycheck on alcohol.

Many people get into bad habits of taking prescription drugs when they have an injury, such as a back injury. They may be given muscle relaxants and strong pain relievers to get them through the first painful days. This is a reasonable medical response to their condition.

Yet, the medication helps them feel so good that they will want to get more. They may go back to the doctor to get more. If the doctor will not agree, they may go to different doctors to get different prescriptions. All these doctor visits and prescriptions usually come with a price tag. Then, when that no longer works, they will go to get their pain relief medications on the streets. It will cost even more to keep up their bad habits.

Of course, people who have bad habits with illegal drugs probably have some of the most expensive bad habits of all. Whether it is cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or methamphetamine, there are no cheap drugs. At least, there will not be an unlimited supply of cheap drugs. If a person truly has a bad habit with one of these drugs, they will always want more until they quit. The cost can get to be astronomical.

Gambling can lead people into financial hardship. Some people have such bad habits with gambling that they lose their houses and everything else they own. They may be in staggering debt on top of that. Now that there is online gambling, they cannot even get away from their bad habits by staying home.

Shopaholics spend money like there is no tomorrow. This bad habit can destroy a budget. It can take money away from things that need to be paid, like a mortgage or car payment.

It is clear that these bad habits are costly in the short run. Many of them are also costly over time, as health issues settle in. The cost of cigarettes is high, for example, but the cost of lung cancer is very much higher. Ridding yourself of these bad habits can only help your finances to get better.