4 Ways To Set Boundaries With Your “Bad” Habits

Making A Habit - The 3 R’s: Reminder, Routine, and Reward.

The new year's start always washes in the idea to leave pieces of you behind so you can grow fully into the new you. I like the idea, and one of the most important parts of this change that we must examine is our own bad habits. Often, we try to use willpower, and we believe as long as we are motivated that it will be enough to push us or pull us over the hump. I lean towards the notion that we shouldn’t always rely on willpower for any change or new year’s resolution. I believe we have to lean into setting strong boundaries with certain habits and even people that cause us to lean into the habits that we know we must break. My most popular course, The Build Your Boundaries course, teaches my step-by-step framework for building boundaries. Let’s pull from that today, and let’s hone in on “habits.”

The making of a habit: The idea of the 3 R’s is one of habit formation:

* Reminder/Cue: a stimulus from the environment that triggers us to do something; a cue initiating the behavior. Habit triggers typically fit into four categories:

1. Location

2. Time

3. Emotional state

4. Other people

* Routine: the physical action we take whenever presented with the reminder/cue. The behavior is associated with the trigger. Doing something over and over is what makes a behavior a routine.

* Reward: what we gain from the habit that fulfills a craving. The reward increases the chances of a habit sticking. If you enjoy the reward, the pleasurable release of dopamine kicks in, and then we want to do it again, again, and again — on a loop.

Although boundary setting is an important ingredient in taking back control of our routines, we need to set boundaries BEFORE changing our habit loops. With the idea of the 3 R’s in mind, here are 4 tips to help us set boundaries with ourselves that may potentially break or change our bad habits:

Tip 1: Awareness ~ Find the triggers

Use mindfulness to tap into what is driving your routines in the first place. In mindfulness, the stripping away, the nigredo — psychologically, is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge.

Practice mindfulness, learn what it means to be still and a listener of self, and take notes about your triggers. Afterward, reflect on the data (what does this feel like? What is happening? What am I observing?) Through mindfulness, become more aware of the triggers and “rewards” which are reinforcing certain behavior. Use mindfulness to tap into what is driving your routines in the first place. In mindfulness, the stripping away, the nigredo — psychologically, is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge. It enables us to pinpoint the triggering agents’ density and to know where our limits are. For clarity and with honesty, ask yourself: Where do we draw our line with ourselves to align our actions with our core beliefs? Is this action helping me or hurting me? Is this aligned to my true goals and my beliefs and values?

Tip 2 ~ Make a plan

Once you have examined your routine, the cue that triggers your behavior, and the reward for your habit, you can decide your boundaries. We are in control of our boundary lines. What’s the plan? Create a new reward value. I think about my most recent weight gain and weight loss. Of course, we cannot pinpoint it to only one factor because we know many go into it, like stress, sleep, diet, and movement.

For the sake of simplicity, however, I have to admit that cookies have been a big part of my life. When I become too stressed, unfocused, or was no longer aligned with my core beliefs, cookies got out of control for me. It was one of the ways I coped with the 2020 pandemic, and I have no problem admitting that. About five months ago, I said enough, and I realigned with the values that meant the most to me. I had to make a serious plan with my meals, sleep, water intake, supplements, micronutrients, macronutrients, healing modalities, and yes – the cookies. I changed my entire life to lose the weight and to make myself the strongest, leanest, and most flexible I’ve ever been.

It caused me to be to create hard boundaries with the cookies. Now, 98% of the time, I am only eating them at home if we make them. My old reward and routine were to go to whole foods every night after dinner and buy the 450+ calorie cookie that soothed me, and to devour oh you know, 1-4 at a time (no shame here). Once I made the change about five months ago, my new routine became going to whole foods once a week to buy the ingredients and tell Daisy to make me some sugar-free and guilt-free cookies, and I have those once or twice a week. The cravings are gone now, and it’s more of a conscious choice –– which to me is freedom. This is tough work, but for most of us, taking a step back and observing our routines and lack of boundaries actually gives us the missing information we need.

Tip 3 ~ Make it hard:

And to build our boundaries, there does have to be some seriousness there, it can be fun too, but we need a commitment.

Changing bad habits makes them more difficult to do, even when you feel like you really want to do them. Block yourself. The more boundaries, the more difficult, the better. Make it more difficult to cross back over the boundary that YOU set. A few months ago, I had a goal, and I realized “this goal is not big enough,” so I upped the goal. We need to make our goals bigger to get the long-term changes and the long-term benefits. Big goals cause us to get serious about our boundaries and the great thing about goals is that you can and should keep it simple. And to build our boundaries, there does have to be some seriousness there, it can be fun too, but we need a commitment.

Tip 4 ~ Question it.

Instead of indulging in bad habits, try to substitute it with curiosity? A great question to ask is why you have that craving in the first place? What does the craving feel like? I did this when those sugar cravings would kick in? I would even get on sites and read what nutritionists and psychologists had to say. I find this article that said you might not have enough protein, and sure enough, that was my problem. I started tracking all of my meals since that day, and I have not missed one time. This is why curiosity, when you have the trigger, is so important. It can lead you down a new routine if you investigate the trigger.

In Summary:

Habits follow a pattern known as a “habit loops: “(trigger) cue/reminder → routine → reward.” Understanding this pattern will expose the triggers and will allow you to establish what course of action to take to. A way to avoid or make it difficult to repeat undesirable behaviors.

Takeaway: Every time we allow ourselves to reinforce the reward, we become more likely to repeat the behaviors, and it takes more than self-control to change them. 

I lean towards the notion that we shouldn’t always rely on willpower for any change or new year’s resolution.

Often when we try to stop bad habits, we only focus on changing the “routine” phase. But at that point, it might already be too late. Instead, be encouraged to practice mindfulness, to reset more than anything else. It’s the mindfulness that brings us closer to breaking the bad habit at its earliest phase – which means operating behind the boundary of avoiding the “cues” that trigger the habit in the first place.

The Build Your Boundaries course has 80+ students immersed in it. It will teach you step-by-step HOW to build healthy boundaries without feeling guilty about it. Visit buildyourboundaries.net to join the program. It’s transforming lives, as we speak.