The psychology behind breaking bad habits

Sometimes we eat too much, or stay up too late staring at our phones, or skip morning yoga.

It’s easy to prescribe faults in personality like “laziness” or “apathy” to someone (or ourselves) for having bad habits.

As social psychologist Wendy Wood explained to Inverse, our good or bad performance is a reflection of habits — not our desires or goals.

And thankfully, these bad habits aren’t entirely our fault. It turns out, any habit is incredibly hard to make or break.

It’s easy to say to yourself that you’re going to put your phone down at a certain time every night or go for a run after work, Woods explains, but it’s actually much harder to follow through with those goals than we think.

People tend to punish themselves too harshly if they fail to perform a good habit (or fail to avoid a bad habit).

3. Repeat on a regular basis. Again, it takes about 2 months to form or break a habit. Be patient and do your best to repeat the action.