¶ … Break a Bad Habit Forming a bad habit can be one of the most problematic things a person can do it their lives. A bad habit can be time consuming, costly, bad for you, and even embarrassing. There are all kinds of habits that can be considered bad; biting your nails, smoking, procrastination, overspending, gossiping, and lacking punctuality to name a few. Any one of these things can be considered socially unacceptable in many cases and in some cases can even cost people their jobs. This paper will examine the complex process known as a "habit." It will provide information about how to identify one, why they are bad for you, and what can be done about it.

There are many ways to identify the ways that bad habits form. If you are a scientist, you might look at the actual brain processes. Research by Assistant Professor Kyle Smith, who joined the faculty of Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences last month, has a light switch that could be flipped to turn off a bad habit in lab rats (Platt). While this research sounds incredibly interesting, most of us will have to deal with our bad habits the old fashioned low-tech way. One of the first steps in this process is to identify the presence of the habit. While this might sound easy, it is often the case that many people do not even know that they have a bad habit; sometimes they have lived with it so long that it just seems natural. Furthermore, habits can often be situation specific. For example, you might show up to work every day on time, but be late to virtually everything else in your life. Other examples of habits that are situation specific include (Phil):

You might eat well at home, but order a large burger and fries at a restaurant.

You...

They can either chose to ignore it, like most people do, or they can try to break that habit with some kind of habit intervention. Sometimes just recognizing the habit will be enough. For example, if you notice that you are biting your nails at your desk then you might say to yourself "you know, I should quit doing that" and the habit will be broken. However, other times the habit can become such a deep part of us that it takes all of our strength and courage to challenge it. Breaking a bad habit can be one of the most challenging parts of a person's life; especially if the habit is something like smoking where the habit is accompanied by a physical addition as well.
It can be very difficult to break a habit and most people have at least one bad habit at any given time; some people have lots. Bad habits may be fairly innocent in our daily lives but in some cases they can be so serious that they can cost you your job. "A single bad habit is not likely to get you fired immediately, but the cumulative effect of the bad habit over time can," says Dr. Katharine Brooks, executive director of the office of personal and career development at Wake Forest University and author of You Majored in What? Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career: "People might notice one bad habit, and it preps…