Alexis Fernandez-Preiksa

Nail biting, people have like put stuff that doesn't taste good on their nails, things like that.

So anything, you know, that's a really like old school trick, but anything that's going to stand in the way of you subconsciously performing that thing is what you're going to do.

But then something that I think is really, really good to try, and this is one of the best ways to break a bad habit, is where you are following this bad behavior with a good behavior immediately.

One thing that I don't recommend you do is that you fall into a system of punishment when you do a bad habit.

I don't think it works.

Well, it doesn't work.

There's a lot of data to show that you trying to punish yourself after a bad habit doesn't actually work for many reasons, but mainly because you don't want to get into a position where you've done the bad thing, then you've quite unquote like punished yourself and then you feel shitter about that and then you feel like –

flat about yourself and then you have all these other feelings and all these thoughts and then you just start to spiral and then you go back into that bad habit because you don't feel good or empowered at all about that thing.

So I don't think that this, oh, I've got to punish myself because I did that.

We're not doing that anymore.

It doesn't really work, which is great.

And there's just better tools that you can use.

So instead of

punishing yourself, you are going to kind of, it's like a substitution, but even if you can't substitute it, it is, you're doing it regardless.

So let's say if you pick up your phone to scroll, okay, and you did the scrolling before this interception of, oh shit, I actually

scrolled and then I realize, ah, that's a habit I'm trying to break.

You have to then read one page of a book.

That's not a punishment.

That's a replacement with a positive behavior.

You might be like, oh, but I don't really have time, whatever.