Tl;Dr:

  • Identify the behavior
  • Consciously notice the behavior
  • Think how to correct said behavior
  • Notice behavior as it happens
  • Notice behavior before it happens
  • Notice then insert correction
  • Time + correction = subconscious behavioral change

Body:

To change a poor behavior you first need to identify it's actions. When the behavior is physical in nature it's pretty straight forward. Mental behavior takes a little more thought. With a mental trait, you'll need to identify times, statements and physical actions that make up the poor behavior you're trying to eradicate.

The second step is to identify when you're performing the poor behavior. Again for a behavior that is solely physical, you might already be catching it in the action or right after it's finished. For a mental behavior, you might not realize you've slipped up until hours after it happened.

Once you start catching your slip ups, you need to figure out how to correct them. My recommendation is replacing the habbit with another one. That's really the only choice for a mental behavior. For instance you might stop bitting your nails by tapping them instead. Though that could also be seen as bothersome. One way to erase a habbit would be instead when you go to perform it, take a few deep breaths.

An example of a personal mental hang up I have is over answering questions. Instead of answering a question right away, I repeat it to myself, attempting to answer directly what was asked, without explaining away my reasoning. What I did to get to that point was after realizing I'd over answered, I'd mentally go back and answer the questions the correct way.

As you keep catching your slip ups, think how you could have improved in that instance because as you continually catch your slip ups you're going to move from realizing that they happened, to that you're in the middle of slipping up. Thankfully with my mental hang up, I can just shut up as soon as I realize I've over answered the question.

Maybe you won't be able to apply the correction as you're fucking up but eventually you'll start seeing yourself about to perform the poor behavior. Because we've been practicing what to do, it'll feel natural to slip the correction in.

From there, you stop catching the poor behavior because the corrected behavior has taken its' place. Sooner or later becoming just as much of a subconscious behavior as the bad one originally was.

In Conclusion:

Bitting nails is bad. Notice when you've chewed them off. Keep noticing again and again. Eventually noticing while you're in the process of clipping them off with your chompers. Stop biting, start taking deep, gut filling breaths. Over time you'll start doing this before biting the nails. You'll loose the urge to bite your nails. You may now just have moments of meditation throughout your life or perhaps you don't need to do the breathing exercise because you no longer notice yourself biting your nails. The habbit is gone either way.