Using ‘Pattern Interrupts’ to Transform Bad Habits into Good Ones

How to use some weird, but effective tricks to more easily change established behaviors — both in yourself, and in others

Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash

Nearly every story of lasting success you’ll hear will have one thing in common: habits. Those who have achieved what they set out to achieve, and sustained that success, have managed to leverage the power of good habits.

But getting the right habits in place can seem like a huge task. After all, you’ve probably got enough going on right now that you don’t need to go building a bunch of good habits — on top of all your other responsibilities.

But luckily, you don’t need to build habits into your life; they’re already there. Nearly everything you do is part of a habit of some sort. It’s just that many habits are one’s we’d rather not have.

So there is no such thing as building a habit from the ground up. You’re simply changing one habit into another.

And changing habits is much easier than you might think — thanks to a little mechanism called the pattern interrupt. It allows you to take an existing undesirable habit, and begin transforming into a desirable one.