Get it Together! 5 Bad Habits You Must Break this 2025!

Hey there, bravehearts. So great to be with you again.

ur year. Dreams come alive in: 2025

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u absolutely have to crush in: 2025

Tess Barker, she's a columnist. She says that bad habits are like diamonds. Very appealing and tough to break. Yes. That's a bad habit, and that's because of the dopamine reward. We get this surge, this juicy dump of dopamine that is the pleasure chemical of the brain that says, yeah, I love this. I wanna do this. When we're indulging in guilty pleasures and that dopamine system, that's really powerful and awesome if your habit is good, but what about when your habit is bad? So that pleasure chemical is not our friend And so we have to become really aware because these bad habits will derail us not this year though So I want you to ask yourself this question. Does this habit lift me or load me Does it lift me up to my best version of myself, my highest self? Does it help me reach my goal? Does it lift me or does it load me? Does it load me down? Does it make me feel guilty afterward? Does it interrupt my progress? Does it make me feel depressed and in despair? We're gonna get rid of the five bad habits that load us.

So number five and I’m counting down. Number five, racking up credit card debt. It's such a great feeling. You talk about dopamine, it's such a great feeling, isn't it? To get those packages from Amazon? I love it. I love pulling up in the driveway and seeing boxes stacked in the driveway, and I get so excited. I know I'm having a chemical rush right there. Those little sneaky delights: the shoes, the purses, the makeup, the lip gloss, the hair extensions, the eyelashes maybe. Okay. A new blouse, maybe whatever it is. What could be better? Right.

Well. Let's ask that question again in 30 days when the bill comes. What could be better? What could be better is not having to pay a hefty bill or not having to pay a late fee because we didn't have the money. What could be better is to have a stellar credit score. What could be better is to save enough money to buy a home and a car, or to finance that new business that we want. What could be better is peace in the home and no stress, no financial stress, but instead financial freedom. That could be better. So when you hear the little voice that says, yeah, but I deserve this, I've worked really hard.

Yeah. Let yourself remember that buying things will never fill the emotional gap that we might be experiencing. It doesn't solve problems. In fact, it might create them. This is buying things and putting them on credit that we don't need. I'm referring to just adding financial stress to ourselves. What could be better is to break the habit.

Here are some suggestions I have for you. I recommend that you start using cash. If you really want something, you pay cash for it. Because when you pay cash, you are so much less likely to relinquish your cash. You stop and you ask yourself, do I really want this? You can employ the 24-hour rule. Don't buy anything until you've thought about it. End impulsive buying and don't use credit, but say, do I really want this? Or you can use the Amazon wish list and go back in 24 hours and say, do I really want that?

help you break that habit in: 2025

Number four is the bad habit we have to crush - the negative outlook and complaining habit. It's a habit to find what's wrong with something. You've trained your brain to show you what's wrong, what's broken, what's not complete, what could be done better, and it's okay if that's your job of critical analysis. But if you look at what's not working instead of what's good, what's positive, and what's uplifting, you are loading yourself down with a heap of despair, depression, anxiety, and stress. Complaining all the time. only ensures that you'll find exactly that and more of the very things that you want to complain about. You're training your RAS, your reticular activating system, your confirmation bias, to show you more of what's wrong, more of things to be negative about. But negativity is poison to your mind, brain, body, heart, and soul, not to mention your relationships, friendships, or your energy levels. It makes you really bad company quite frankly, I've been around some people who have the negativity habit. They complain about everything and it really ruins a good time.

So to break this habit, start a gratitude journal. You really can't be negative and bitter and fault-finding and complaining and grateful at the same time. I mean, I could end it right there. Being grateful is the cure for negativity. Practice blessing before you complain or negative about someone. You bless them. You find the things, three things. Our brain loves threes. You find three things that you can bless them for and say this is what's good about them and this is what I love about them.

If it's someone you don't know and they're in the grocery store and you're tempted to just curse them under your breath, like. What in the world? Stop yourself. It's a habit. Stop yourself and bless them instead. Then just ask somebody to hold you accountable and call you out. Every time I complain or say something negative, call me out on that. Take a rubber band and snap yourself every time. You've got to interrupt that habit. It is a neural pathway. It is strong and it is working.

Number three on our five countdown list of bad habits. Stress eating and drinking. Overindulging. Well, I've had a rough day. I deserve this. Or I've really been good all week, so I'm gonna eat this. Grabbing snacks out of boredom. This is so difficult, you all, to do. Grabbing snacks. out of stress, that sneaky snack. At the end of the day, you're mindlessly watching TV, and you just want something. Emotional eating or stress eating, it sabotages any good plan, your health, your energy, your confidence, your self-love, and the pride that you have in yourself. You become frustrated and angry at yourself because you can't get yourself to obey yourself.

Why stop this negative habit? Because we know emotional eating is a poor way to choose. We need food for nourishment to fuel our bodies. And it is a beautiful social thing, but eating should be planned. Especially if you're trying to lose weight or maintain weight. It only adds guilt when we stress eat. It doesn't fix our problem. So to break this habit. Pause before eating and ask yourself, am I really hungry? Do I really want this? Am I avoiding some emotions and some feelings that I really should process and maybe I should think about them instead of shoving some food in my mouth? And is there a better choice if I really am hungry?

I have a friend who's a coach, coach Monica, shout out to her keto mom. She says, if you're hungry, eat a green bean. If you're really hungry, eat some green beans. If you don't want a green bean, you're not really hungry. You're probably stressed eating or eating out of habit. Or you're having some kind of craving that has been activated by your poor eating and you woke up the sugar addiction or something that you drank.

So, have a go-to stress reliever when you feel that, you know, take a five-minute walk, change your physiology, do some jumping jacks, interrupt something, do some deep breathing, or journal instead for reaching for food. Don't provide for the flesh. Get rid of all of the hazardous sugar-laden snacks and keep healthy choices visible and available to you.

Number two gotta smash this one, wasting time with TV or the internet. Man, according to the A.C. Nelson company, the average American watches four hours of TV a day. Holy moly, four hours of TV a day. It's 28 hours. That's a part-time full-time work week. 28 hours or two months of non-stop television watching out of your year. I can think of so many other things. You can write a book in two months. You can start a business plan in two months. You can go to a health clinic for two months. You can change your whole life in two months. You can paint your house. You can change your furniture. You can do so many things. You can clean out every closet you have. There's got to be better ways to spend our time.

Too much internet and TV consumption can quietly drain your energy, mental, emotional, and physical energy, and motivation. We know that. Plus the screen pulls us into some kind of passive state. You know, it just lulls us into apathy and mediocrity, replacing valuable time that could be spent on our growth, development, and self-care.

We also know that overexposure to these blue lights disrupts our circadian rhythm. So our natural wake-up and go-to-sleep natural cycles totally disrupted by the blue light of these screens, these iPad and phone screens. We know that, and so it messes with our quality of sleep, the depth of our sleep. We're fatigued. We don't have, we're not producing melatonin. It's disquieting our mental clarity, diminishing our mental clarity. We know this, so overconsumption of TV and mindless scrolling really is the enemy of your creativity. You've said it to your kids or your grandkids, go outside and play.

When we were kids, we used to play and make up games and use our imagination. Okay, how about it? So, the same for us. So, to break this habit, decide in advance how much TV and internet consumption you think is healthy and beneficial for you. Decide in advance and then hold yourself to it. Put on a timer, a buzzer, and don't allow yourself The rational lie that says, well, you know, I don't have anything else I really could be doing. Yes, you do. Do something productive. Read a book. Get into a good novel. Wash a car if it's the summer months. Organize your closet. Take a walk. Paint your fingernails. Exercise. Do something. Throw away the stuff in the junk drawer that you don't need or make a rule that says I bundle my TV watching.

I only watch TV when I'm walking on the treadmill or while I'm cleaning out this closet or this drawer or I only watch TV while I'm also doing some weight lifting. Okay, by the way, there's a significant correlation in studies between TV watching and our body image. That's interesting, isn't it? It is proven that we become less content with our own lives, our own bodies, and our own successes when we over scroll on Facebook and Instagram where we're clearly only watching the highlight screens of someone else's life.

abit that we have to break in: 2025

Let's call it what it really is, our apathetic zone, our I don't want to engage in life right now. Fully zone. I'm afraid zone. So I don't do anything zone. All right? You get it, but every excuse costs you something. There is a price to pay, costs you your time, your progress, your potential, and all the things that we've been talking about. The truth is there's never going to be a perfect moment to start. Because things will rarely be easy, and yes, you will have obstacles. But the difference between success and stagnation is simply those who succeed start. They stop making excuses and they start taking action.

What can you do today to start? So write it down. This is the year I make no excuses because your goals deserve your focus. You deserve to reach your potential. You have dreams inside of you that have been stagnant for far too long. It's time. As the saying goes, you can have results or you can have excuses, but you can't have both. I believe Arnold Schwarzenegger is the one who first said that.

So what will you choose today? Are you going to point your finger at something outside of your own self and say, well, this is the reason why, and that's the reason why? If you do that, you do understand that you're saying you're powerless. that you're a passive passenger in the car and someone else is driving, that you're not in charge of your own destiny, but you're not powerless. You're stronger than, you know, you have decision-making power. You are in charge of your own life. You are the key because it is not what has happened to you But it's what you decide to do with what has happened to you. So this is your year. Stop making excuses. Excuses will always be there, but opportunities will not. Success is what happens after you stop making excuses.

All right, so what are you going to do with what I just shared with you? Now guess what? These are just five habits I wanted to highlight, but there are five more. We're going to talk about it later in the season here, but what about ignoring your body's health, not washing off your makeup before you go to bed, keeping generational clutter, keeping a messy closet, or procrastination? All bad habits we're going to identify in episodes coming up, so make sure you subscribe and follow me so you don't miss what's next.

Finally, I want to remind you that my offer for you is my book for $3, The Making of a BraveHearted Woman: Courage, Confidence, and Vision for Your Midlife. We also invite you to join us on January 24 for the workshop and my course, The Bravehearted Transformational Journey, where your life will be changed. It's not heavy lifting, but it is an incredible outcome. These tweaks that you make in your life, and I'm going to walk right with you and show you how to do it. Stuff that nobody else is telling you how to do because they'd rather just keep taking your money. But I want to see you make changes in your life that help you realize your dreams. All in the notes for you.

dreams! Dreams come alive in: 2025