- AGGRESION
You are aggressive when you feel that you cannot get your point across satisfactorily without overcompensating with words or action that led to loss of control. For example, you may be having a discussion with someone and when you feel they are not getting the point you start shouting and throwing your arms in an effort to make them understand.
You can break the pattern of aggression by not always expecting to get your way, but thus does not mean you should not be assertive. You should assert yourself in everything you do or say without becoming aggressive. Many individuals turn assertiveness into full-blown aggression when they feel the other person is undermining them.
To achieve what you want, always try to put your case forward calmly and rationally and even if your ideas do not carry the day, you will take pride in knowing that you did your best for your cause and those you were trying to convince still have respect for you. They wouldn’t if you became aggressive and started shouting or throwing things or banging the table.
2. BINGE EATING
There are people who turn to food when they are emotionally upset. There is an emotional component to binge eating and sometimes this is caused by mineral deficiencies. As a human being, train your body to only eat when necessary. Even animals hunt when they are hungry. They do not eat for pleasure!
You are also likely to binge eat if you are used to sugary foods, such as chocolates, cakes, biscuits. When the body craves for these sugars, you are likely to binge eat. You should start fasting to correct and cleanse your gut, and will not have the urge to binge. By fasting, the body will control blood sugar levels – you will avoid the familiar binge/guilt trap.
3. BEING CONSTANTLY LATE
You have a problem of time management. You are constantly late to almost everything- church, appointments, work or catching a bus. Being constantly late is a demonstration that you consider your time more important than other people’s. It makes your family, friends and colleagues think you are selfish. You should aim at having a routine in place and respecting other people’s time, therefore not being late on them.
You may think being 5 minutes late is no big deal but this is a long time for somebody waiting, and besides it disrupts programs. You should plan your day so that you are able to fit in all your appointments on time and this means giving yourself an allowance for traffic jams or something that may come up unexpectedly and hold you up. If you schedule to arrive your appointment 15 to 20 minutes early, you will give yourself enough time to deal with things that may crop up.
4. DWELLING ON PAST RELATIONSHIPS
Some people are just not able to get over a relationship. They have a tendency of looking at current relationships through the eyes of the previous one. They over scrutinize past relationships and can’t seem to accept they are over and this hinders them from moving on. They feel they will never get into a relationship as good as the past one and also tend to glorify past partners hence blaming themselves for the breakup. They remain unsure of their ability to have another successful relationship.
To break this habit, you need to look back at destructive patterns from the past relationship and ask yourself how you can do things differently in this one. There is nothing wrong in learning from past mistakes and moving on but you must learn to stop beating yourself up about them. When you refocus your attention to your current relationship you will be able to see all that was wrong with the previous one- the reason it did not last. You will be able to give this current relationship a chance to survive.
5. ENDLESSLY GIVING YOURSELF
While it is okay to be available for those you love, it’s not okay to give yourself to them endlessly, while forsaking your needs. Men are particularly bad at this, perhaps because of the societal view towards their responsibilities. They become too busy helping everyone in the family and everyone else out and their own wants and needs come bottom of the list.
To break this habit, you will need to adopt a more assertive approach to other people. It is important to be there for people you care for, but you must clearly let them know where you draw the line. You will need to have ability to do this otherwise you will lose your sanity. Remember, you can be a good person without absorbing all the problems in relationships and they will become more rewarding and not burdening you.
6. IMPATIENCE
To many individuals, unless it happens now, it’s no good. We live in a rat race and endlessly chasing becomes the game. You can break this habit by first getting to know when you are becoming impatient. Before losing your temper or doing things like tapping the counter while waiting to be served, take a deep breath and try to refocus your mind to something else. Remember throwing a tantrum will not achieve anything much other thana making you look like a fool. The sooner you realize life has the potential to be endlessly frustrating and that there are many things you cannot control, the lower your blood pressure will remain, and the happier you will be.
7. LACK OF CONFIDENCE
When you lack confidence, you end up taking yourself out of bigger and better things because of your negative thinking and self-doubt. To break this habit, you must first understand that you can learn to be confident. Confidence is not a personality trait people are born with. People develop confident behavior as they go through life with its teachings. Lack of confidence is a self-defeating attitude because unless you try, you will never know how good you are. In life, everything does not have to be perfect.
Remember other people react to your confident body language positively, which instantly bolsters your self-esteem, helping you gain confidence.
8. OVEREATING
Stop the bad habit of overeating! Why would you eat huge portions of everything and complain of being overweight? You constantly have to ‘lose weight’ as a new year resolution. To break this habit, you need to eat smart and fast. Instead of eating sugary foods and inflammatory foods, give your body natural foods like yams, different types of beans, sauerkraut, cassava, arrow roots, and greens.
9. PROCASTINATING
We tend to push doing things to tomorrow or later because we become overwhelmed by the perceived enormity of the task ahead. You can break this habit that keeps you from achieving your goals by writing down the tasks you need to get done and breaking them into bits and pieces so they do not appear that big. If your office desk is overflowing with paperwork, sort out the most important documents you first need to get out of the way and work with those.
Breaking the task into small bite sizes helps you shed off the emotional ‘weight’ of what you know you need to do but haven’t done. Once you prioritize a goal for each day and throw yourself into it, you will find that work gets done and your start and new day without feeling overwhelmed by the workload.
10. TAKING PROBLEMS PERSONALLY
There are individuals with a tendency of taking every problem personally and this makes them their lives so miserable. If something in their life does not work out the way they expected, they take it personally. This is because they harbor that deep-rooted belief that they are really not capable of achieving their goals. They always see themselves as failures. To break this habit, you will need to realize that a negative reaction is more often about a situation or bad timing than you. If something does not work out, instead of blaming yourself, think about other contributing factors. Analyzing the situation when a problem occurs gives a sense of perspective. It enables you to stop going ‘beyond the evidence’ of what’s been presented to you to further proof that you deserved what you got, when you are really not the problem.
Thank you so much for this