General transcript to podcast
For the most part, a bad habit is something that you do repetitively, that you can stop doing when you really and truly decide to, and that society has deemed to be bad and rude. Often it breaks laws, customs or some moral code for the society. Most people think that bad habits are something to be avoided because they can often affect your health and wellness.
There are different categories of bad habits. Let's look at the most common ones.
* Time-Wasting Habits – Not putting things where they go, not creating a home for everything you own, and not keeping your stuff organized can make you waste time. Wasting time can end up affecting your down time because you still have to make time for work.
* Unhealthy Habits – If you have some unhealthy habits like eating too many unhealthy snacks every night, watching lots of TV instead of doing physical things, and avoiding going to the doctor on a regular basis, you can truly affect your health negatively.
* Lost Productivity Habits – If you don’t have a morning (wake-up for those who are not morning people) routine and you don’t have some sort of schedule for being productive, you will lose opportunities. These types of bad habits are really lack of good habits.
* Habits That Harm Your Financial Health – If you’ve developed habits like gambling, these can ruin your financial health today and in the future.
Overspending is often started by a bad habit of not minding your finances.
* Habits That Impede Your Social Life – For some people, their bad habits can hurt their social life. If you have a bad habit of being late, not caring about others much, or doing behaviors that repel others, you may end up with no social life.
* Habits That Harm Others – Some people develop habits that don’t just harm themselves but others too. For example, if you have a smoking habit and you smoke around other people (especially kids), this is a very harmful habit. Spreading viruses and other germs.
* Habits That Ruin Relationships – Some people allow their habits to even ruin their relationships. Habits like being sloppy, unclean, and not thinking of others can ruin many relationships, especially if you’re chronically late a lot or gossip too much.
* Gross Habits – Smoking and nail biting come to mind when it comes to gross habits that people do. So does nose picking, picking your toes with your fingers, and other rude behavior that you should not do in public (and some not even in private). If you do have these habits, you can stop them with a plan.
Bad habits are simply habits that are not good for you or anyone else around you - whether human, animal, or the environment.
Nine Habits That Are Bad for Your Mental Health
These nine habits can cause problems that eventually affect your mental health. Being aware of them can help you check yourself regularly to ensure that you’re not experiencing negative mental health issues based on your bad habits.
1. You Have Bad Posture – You might not think of something as physical as this to cause problems with mental health. However, if you tend to slouch and sit wrongly, your mood might go with it - especially if you tend to experience pain from your bad posture. And if you don’t now, you will as you age.
2. You’re Prone to Perfectionism – Some people think "perfectionism" is a good quality to have but the truth is, having perfectionist tendencies is not a good thing. It can mean that you’re procrastinating more or it may mean that you are fearful of your life, including both success and failure.
3. You Experience Guilt Easily – One of the worst emotions that you can allow yourself to have regularly is guilt. Most of the time, guilt is a useless emotion not based on real reasons to feel guilty. If you feel guilty regularly, you probably don’t feel loved or cared for, which can affect your mental health.
4. You Don’t Exercise or do Healthy Physical Activity Regularly – Being sedentary is one of the worst habits you can have. Some studies suggest it’s worse than smoking. That’s pretty bad. If you sit more than four hours a day, you’ll need to incorporate intentional exercise to avoid problems. When you don’t move much, you may end up depressed.
5. You Have a Negative Mindset – If you’ve allowed yourself to develop the habit of always thinking negatively about things, it’s time to turn that around. Negative thinking leads to anxiety and depression and feelings of powerlessness.
6. You Use Social Media Too Much – Reading social media posts is a proven bad habit for your health, especially your mental health. The main reason is that people tend to share and post more negativity than positivity.
7. You Don’t Have Downtime from Screen Time – If you transition from your work computer to your home computer to your TV, that’s way too much screen time. The light emitted from screens can interfere with your circadian rhythms, causing insomnia and daytime sleepiness.
8. You Don’t Get Enough Sleep – If you have a habit of staying up late and not sleeping enough in general, you need to try to ensure that you do sleep more. Everyone needs different amounts but if you’re always tired, it will affect your mental health and make it harder for you to deal with issues.
9. You Don’t Stay Hydrated – Drinking enough water and liquids each day is an important component in ensuring good health. Many people walk around dehydrated and don’t realize it. If you are not counting your water and you feel tired, double check because it may be the water. When you feel tired, it can affect your mental health and make you foggy and unable to make good decisions.
These bad habits can lead to poor mental health due to the fact you’re not going to be operating at the top of your game. If you want to ensure your mental health remains as good as possible, try to reverse these bad habits.
Nine Habits That Are Bad for Your Body
Some habits can develop without you even realizing it. Plus, you may not know that they are very bad for your body. If you want to avoid habits that harm your body, read about these nine body-damaging habits that you can overcome.
1. Over-Exercising – Some exercise is good for you, but too much is damaging. This is something that most professional athletes totally understand because often their bodies are harmed too. You may only see the event that shows them at their best. The best thing is to exercise moderately and stop if you hurt.
2. Staying Up Late--Regardless of Your Biological Schedule – It’s not going to harm you if you stay up late sometimes, but doing it regularly and still getting up on time can truly harm your body. You can end up having more cardiovascular disease and digestive issues if you stay up too late all the time.
3. Sitting Too Much – One of the worst things you can do for your life is to sit all the time. It's important to understand that sitting will harm your circulation, cardiovascular health, and contributes to obesity. The good news is you only need to exercise about 20 to 30 minutes a day for every four hours you sit to mitigate the damage.
4. Skipping Meals – It’s so tempting to skip meals when you’re busy, but this can be worse for you than you think. You may develop issues with your blood sugar, you might not get enough vitamins and minerals, and you may not be your best at work or at play without enough nutrition.
5. Emotional Eating – If you find that you eat due to being sad, happy, or feeling any other emotion, it’s good to stop this habit because it can lead to obesity - or even worse, eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.
6. Not Hydrating – If you don’t drink at a minimum of eight glasses of fresh filtered water each day, you are probably walking around dehydrated. When you pee, your pee should be almost clear or a very pale clear shade of yellow. It should not smell bad either. If you do have dark pee and it smells, drink more water. Water helps you process vitamins, minerals, and rid your body of toxins via your kidneys.
7. Poor Posture – If you don’t know how to sit, stand, or walk properly and you habitually do it incorrectly, eventually it will cause problems. Many people have severe hip problems simply from poor posture that limits mobility when they get older.
8. Binge Drinking – Drinking a drink or two a day is not bad for you. However, if you tend to overdo it when you drink, you may want to consider not drinking. If you binge drink, you may make poor decisions while you’re drunk, or you may simply end up sick with alcohol poisoning.
9. Smoking – Outside of sitting for more than four hours a day, smoking is the next thing on your list that is super-bad for your body. Smoking boosts your blood pressure, puts chemicals into your system and can cause cancer, stroke, and heart attack.
Work on replacing that bad habit with a healthy habit over 30 to 90 days to ensure you’ve beat it before moving on to the next. I wrote Oddball the guide to specifically and efficiently create good habits instead.
The Impact of Bad Habits on Your Family and People in Your Life
Your bad habits can adversely affect you and your entire family. This is especially true when you have kids. Kids learn most of their bad habits from their parents. If you’re a parent or you influence kids, you may want to do all you can to eliminate your bad habits by replacing them with good habits.
Poor Methods for Handling Stressful Events
How you respond to stress in your life is usually a habit by the time you’re an adult. If you were not taught good ways of dealing with stress during childhood, you probably repeat whatever you learned from the adults around you. If you know you deal with stress poorly, study good ways to deal with it so you don’t pass it on to your kids.
Spending Money Impulsively
If you observed your father or mother spending money on unneeded purchases on impulse, it’s more than likely you do it too unless you’ve realized it and stopped it. You can cause a lot of financial issues just by spending money without thought.
Bad Ideas about Money
Adding to the above, bad ideas about money in general can be passed on to the kids. If you fear money due to not having enough, or fear not having enough, you may make some very bad choices that will negatively impact you and your family.
Worrying Obsessively
Demonstrating constant worrying about things you cannot change will also rub off on kids. They see their parent, the person they most trust in the world to keep them safe, being worried about everything. It makes them feel unsure and sometimes act out badly. If you want to stop worrying, you may have to get professional help - especially if it also comes with inherited anxiety.
Being a Picky Eater
Some picky eaters have a reason they are the way they are, such as being on the autistic spectrum and having texture issues, but others are only that way due to copying their parents. If you are a picky eater, you can be picky without demonstrating it to the kids. Plus, don’t force your family to do without meals they love due to your problem.
Not Expressing Yourself
You teach people how to treat you and if you never express your thoughts, ideas, and feelings about any situation, no one will know how you feel. Then you may feel as if you’re being mistreated and act out on that too, causing a rift in relationships.
Poor Communication Skills
Part of not expressing yourself may have to do with poor communication skills. Some people get very nervous talking to people (even their family) about any issues they’re having. So, they keep it to themselves. This is not a good idea. Instead, learn to be open and positive with your family.
Inability to Maintain Good Relationships
If you cannot communicate, you’re over-worrying, and you don’t like confrontation, it can be hard to maintain good relationships with your family. Building and maintaining good relationships can be learned by example. When you show your kids that you're spending time with your best friend alone at lunch once a month, they learn something from that.
Not Saying "I’m Sorry"
You’ve heard people joke about not being able to say they’re sorry, but this is not a good quality for someone to have. If you are one of those people, learn how to do it now. It’s easy. Just state what you did wrong and then say, "I am very sorry." No, if’s and’s or but’s.
Eating a Poor Diet
Definitely, diet is passed on to kids. Think about how children from all over the world eat interesting food based on what their parents eat. This proves that taste is a matter of what you are used to. If your parents demonstrated and fed you a bad diet, unless you work toward change you’re going to do the same with your kids.
There is no doubt that each of these bad habits negatively impacts your family. What’s worse is that you are at risk of passing these types of bad habits on to your kids. Even spouses can catch bad habits from each other.
The Impact of Bad Habits on Your Friends
There are some bad habits that even your good friends will not stick around for. For this reason, you may want to notice if you do any of these bad habits. If you do, you’ll want to apologize for it and stop doing it. You may even be able to get some of your friends to help you manage some of your bad habits.
* Gossiping – The truth is, if you gossip to one friend, the friend you’re gossiping with is going to assume you gossip about them to your other friends. What’s more, most people will not keep secrets so they’re going to tell the friend you gossiped about. This is not a good look. If you find yourself talking about others in a negative way, train yourself to start saying nice things instead until you stop talking about people when they’re not around at all.
* Not Making Time for Friends – We all get busy in our lives but if you don’t set aside time to spend with your friends, you will lose them. People move on relatively fast. Say no to more than three get-togethers and they’ll likely stop asking. Put time with friends as a priority in your calendar. You don’t have to do it every day or even every week, but enough that you still know the person.
* Not Cutting Ties When Needed – Sometimes we maintain bad friendships out of habit too. If you have anyone in your life who makes you feel bad about yourself and does not lift you up or others up, let them go.
* Not Initiating the Contact That You Crave – If you’re an introvert or simply shy, it can be hard to initiate the contacts that you need in your life. If you find yourself not spending time with friends that are important to you, and you haven’t for a long time, try initiating the contact you crave to restart those friendships.
* Not Showing Your Love for Your Friends – If you really care for your friends, make the time to show them. Send them neat articles you think they’ll like, Groupon deals you know they will want to take, and cards for their special days.
* Being Negative – The truth is, some of us are more negative by nature than others. The problem is, negativity is a huge turnoff to most of the population, and it’s not fun to be around. Even negative people don’t like being around other negative people. Try to turn thoughts into positives in your mind, or focus on the positives when you can. Stop voicing negativity unless it’s very important.
* Not Being Open and Vulnerable – Feeling love from your friends and giving love back to your friends requires that you are open and vulnerable to them. The only way to really do this is to focus on spending time with your friends more often so you can truly know each other.
* Not Being Consistent – If you decide to embark on improving your friendships, don’t start and then stop. This is especially true if you’ve been a bad friend lately. Get out your calendar and set up times that you can focus on your friends.
If you can turn this around, you’ll get better at maintaining long-term friendships. Nothing really is better than making new friends and keeping them around long term. If you have ever wondered why you can’t make good friends, check yourself to find out if you have any of these bad habits that impact friendships.
The Impact of Bad Habits on Your Work
You may not even realize that some of the bad habits you’ve developed over your lifetime are causing you problems at work. However, if you have any of the habits below, you could be affecting your job (or business) if you’re not aware.
Lack of Sleep
If you have the bad habit of staying up late, again regardless of your schedule but you have to get up early to go to work, you are making a huge mistake. Not sleeping enough at night can not only impact your performance at work but it could also cause health problems - including cardiovascular disease.
Not Eating Breakfast (Your First Meal)
While you don’t have to eat a giant breakfast at the crack of dawn to be healthy, at some point during the morning you should eat something - even if it’s just a banana with some peanut butter on it. When you don’t eat when you’re hungry, you can cause your body to be weak and your brain unable to focus.
Reading Emails Constantly
Even at work you should not check your email all the time. Checking email (and social media) is a trap that might take you down a rabbit hole of no return. Instead, set a timer to check your email and social media or any other communication channel just three or four times a day at set times.
Sitting for Long Periods of Time
It often can’t be helped, but if you sit for work then go home and sit some more, you’re making a big mistake. This can impact your health and make it hard for you to do your job at all. Find ways to move around the office more, whether it’s taking the steps or volunteering for the food runs so you can walk around.
Complaining about Everything
This can be a habit that sneaks up on you. You may not even realize that you are doing it. However, most people tend to complain more openly than they express joy openly. In order to stop doing this, recognize the behavior and say something nice instead of something negative.
Comparing Yourself to Others
Anytime you start comparing yourself to others, it’s a mistake. It’s also a dangerous mistake. The reason it’s so bad is that you have no idea what the person has really experienced in their life or what happens to them at home. You cannot compare because so much is different. It can erode your confidence and cause you to second guess yourself, making you look incompetent.
Thinking You’re a Great Multitasker
Here is some news for you; no one is good at multitasking. If you’re trying to multitask - even if it’s required at work, it’s going to be hard to get things done accurately. Multitasking is the curse of mediocracy. Do what you can to get out of that situation so that you can do your best work by fully focusing and being mindful about one thing at a time.
If you can replace these bad habits with good habits, you may end up becoming irreplaceable at work or you might boost your business to the next level. The main thing you want to do is to at least recognize which bad habits you have so that you can plan to combat them with good habits.
The True Impact of Addiction
Many people erroneously assume that their addiction won't harm others. Of course, it does depend on what the addition is too. But for the most part, addition can really harm you and your entire community.
* Physically Harmful – Most additions have something to do with drugs, food, or other substances that can harm your physical health and sometimes the physical health of those around you. For example, cigarettes not only hurt you but the second-hand smoke also harms anyone around it, and the chemicals that are left behind on surfaces also continue to harm people.
* Can Kill Your Career – One issue with addition is that it often gets in the way of your work life, even if you think it’s not. You won’t be as productive as others and you’ll call in sick more. And if you think no one knows about your addition, you’re wrong.
* Bad for You Emotionally and Spiritually – When you are addicted to something, it is a very emotional thing because you know it’s bad for you and that it’s harming everything about your life, but you feel powerless to stop it. The guilt can be worse than anything.
* Ruins Your Financial Future – This can be very true for any type of addition, because often it requires money being spent that isn’t really in the budget. For example, a gambling addiction can lead you to spend just as much money that you don’t have as cocaine addiction. A coffee addition might not impact you or others much in other areas, but it’s still going to impact your finances.
* Harms Your Freedom – When you have an addiction, you tend to base all your choices on whether you can have that thing you’re addicted to or not. You may avoid social activities and doing things outside of where you can comfortably engage in your addiction.
* Harms Romantic Relationships – Addiction requires lots of lying and deception. When the partners find out, they are usually not too happy about it. They will usually break up the relationship, or if they are also damaged, they may stay in it and you will both be miserable together.
* Ruins Friendships – The same that happens in romantic relationships will happen (though much faster) in friendships. Friends will lose interest in being around you if it’s always dramatic and about you and your addiction. They may love you, but they are powerless to help.
* Can Harm Those You Don’t Even Know – If you engage in your addictive behavior around anyone, you can harm them even if you don’t know them. For example, driving under the influence, going bankrupt due to gambling debts, and more, all contribute to problems in your community.
* Can Cause Bad Impact on Your Entire Community – When a community is harshly impacted by addiction, it will become less desirable to live in. The people who can do so will leave.
To lessen the impact of addiction on yourself, your family, and your community, seek professional help to help you develop good habits to replace bad ones so that you can overcome the addiction. Don’t allow that word "addiction" to frighten you. Some addictions are simply bad habits. Some carry with them an additional problem of a chemical addiction, either physically or emotionally, which may require professional help to overcome.
The True Impact of Smoking
Smoking affects you in big ways, but it also impacts on everyone you know. It affects your looks, your health, and your environment. That means it affects your entire family and all your friends and anyone you meet. A bad smoking habit has a serious impact on all aspects of your life.
Serious Health Issues
Smoking causes heart disease, lung problems, and more. It’s linked to almost every single cardiovascular issue that you may have health-wise. The toxins found in cigarettes can affect your immune system, which means you’re going to get sick more often. Almost every type of cancer can also be linked to smoking, especially cancers of the cardiovascular system.
Productivity Issues
Due to being sick more than others, your productivity (and your kids' if you smoke around them) will be greatly impacted. You’ll miss more work and school and not be 100 percent when you are there due to not feeling well. Plus, if you take breaks at work to smoke, you may not be living up to your end of the deal at work, putting your job in jeopardy.
Environmental Effects
The chemicals used in cigarettes starts during the tobacco growth period and continues through the entire manufacturing process. The toxins from the smoke get on clothing, furniture and other surfaces where they pose a threat to anyone around them, especially children. Some people who smoke are also not thinking clearly when they throw their lit cigarette out the window, which can cause a forest fire.
Lowers Property Values
When you let everyone smoke in your home or vehicle, the property value will go down substantially because people don’t want to buy a place that smells of smoke or is yellowed from the smoke. Fixing it is hard because you essentially have to get rid of all the furniture, flooring, and even sometimes walls to remove the damage.
Financial Problems
Smoking is not cheap. Due to not feeling your best, probably being ill more often, and other things like that, you’re going to spend more money that you could be saving. A pack of cigarettes can go from 6 to 13 dollars or more. Most chronic smokers smoke a pack a day. You do the math.
Emotional Impact
For some people, their addition is a serious emotional problem too. It’s hard to say no, they feel powerless, and sometimes the family also piles on pressure trying to get the smoker to quit. Often, they don’t do this very nicely. The emotions surrounding this bad habit are common and serious.
If you are suffering from any of these negative impacts of smoking, you may want to look to smoking cessation programs. Many insurance providers cover smoking cessation programs, even in basic insurance, so check your policy.
Eight Seemingly Harmless Habits That Are Actually Bad for You
Just like there are bad habits that are actually good for you, there are things that people do habitually that they think are good when they’re really not. Maybe it seemed logical but then turned out not to be true once science looked at it.
1. Squeezing Your Pimples – Many people like to squeeze their pimples (or spots as some people call them), but this is not good for you. If you don’t do it right, you could end up with a nasty skin infection. Talk to your doctor about the right way to deal with skin issues, so you don’t hurt yourself more than you think you do.
2. Eating Unnaturally "Low-Fat" Food – Due to all the bad press that fat gets, a lot of people think they’re doing the right thing when they buy low-fat milk, low-fat cheese, low-fat dressing and so forth – but it’s not good for you. The main reason is that they usually replace the fat with sugar to make it palatable. Eating natural fat is much better for you than sugar, plus it satiates you longer.
3. Eating Six Small Meals a Day – This is a common diet idea that people think they need to follow. It’s common in all types of diet plans and is supposed to help control hunger by keeping your blood sugar steady. Sadly, studies are showing that this doesn’t really work because people who eat smaller meals report being hungrier more than those who eat fewer larger meals. ( I cannot confirm. Though I believe to test what works best for your body not what "studies" show).
4. Drinking Bottled Water over Tap Water – Most bottled water is infected with plastic residue. If you live in a place with potable tap water, you should use it. You can get an in-home filtering system that will cut down on chemicals like bleach and fluoride.
5. You Drink (too much) Juice Every Day – One problem with juice, even if it’s freshly squeezed, is that all the fiber has been removed. When you drink juice without the fiber in it, you are just bombarding your body with a high dose of sugar that your body thinks is just sugar.
6. You Don’t Eat Carbs – Many people see friends giving up carbs and gluten, so they think this is for them. The truth is if you have no medical conditions that are helped with a low-carb or no-gluten diet, you could be harming your health.
People without health conditions need carbs - including fruit, veggies, and grains.
7. You Do Juice and Smoothie "Fasts" – Lots of people today like to do "detoxes" to clean their bodies, and often this manifest with smoothies or juices. The bad thing is, most of the time these are high-fruit-based recipes that can really harm your blood sugar and your metabolism.
8. You Work Out for Hours Per Day – Exercise is good for you, but professional athletes know that daily training is not actually good for anything other than ensuring high performance on the day of the contest or event. Normal people should not train daily like that at that level, and should take breaks from working out.
If you already do some of these things, research them further so you’ll see for yourself that these are not really good for you to do regularly after all.
Eight "Bad" Habits That Are Actually Good for You
Believe it or not, some bad habits are really good for you. Sadly, our parents usually try to punish us out of or control us out of doing these things. Of course, everything in moderation, right? Let’s look at eight "bad" habits that are actually good for you that you can stop trying to end now.
1. Fidgeting - If you tend to wiggle a lot, your mom probably tried to stop it. Your partner might try too. However, fidgeting is really good for you because it burns more calories and keeps your blood moving. This is especially true if you have a job that requires a lot of sitting. Sitting is possibly worse for you than smoking, so anything that can undo that damage is a good thing.
2. Gum Chewing – Sugarless gum is really good for you. If you have the right dental work or your own teeth, chewing gum burns calories, helps you eat less, freshens your breath and also cuts down on cavities.
3. Video Games – While there may be some games that aren’t worth the added benefit, playing video games helps with developing fine motor skills, keeps the mind nimble, and by some reports can help give relief for chronic pain conditions by taking your mind off the problem.
4. Daydreaming – Finding a way to allow your mind to get bored enough to be able to daydream is very good for your mind as well as for your goals in life. You cannot create amazing goals for your life if you can't daydream.
5. Swearing – Everyone has a swear jar growing up, either for parents or the kids. Swearing is considered inappropriate, but studies show that people who swear appropriately tend to have less stress in their lives. Remember that swearing is completely different from a slur. A slur is something you say about a person, whilst a swearword is just a curse word - otherwise known as an expletive.
6. Occasional Messiness – If you are a naturally messy person, take heart; you’re likely also a very creative person. Messiness is sometimes a sign of creativity. If you want to be more creative, don’t purposely become messy but realize that sometimes being messy is required to be creative at least initially. At some point however, organization will be necessary to make sense of things in life in general.
7. Sleeping in Late – They say that "the early bird gets the worm," but do they? Sleeping well and enough each cycle is important to your health and brain function. If you stayed up late and need to sleep in and it won’t cause you to get fired or miss something important – go for it.
Of course, you don’t want to do some of these things when other people are around, but it’s okay to accept some of these things as part of who you are and part of living life. As long as you can choose the habits you create, you can build a life exactly as you want it to be.
Wishing You Wholeness