Mom should have time for herself. How to find free time for yourself as a young mother? Why Mom Needs a Vacation
The question of how to deal with bad habits has occupied the minds of people for more than a dozen and even more than one hundred years. Tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse, and in recent years, drug addiction - all these serious problems are traditionally called bad habits. However, modern scientists are far from considering such destructive manifestations of personality as mere habits. Today, psychology and narcology recognize smoking, alcoholism and drug addiction as serious diseases for which there are no miracle drugs that can cure anyone. And this fact must be recognized. There is no 100% guarantee of getting rid of addictions medically and is not expected in the near future. But still, for everyone who sincerely wants to give up these essentially slave habits, there is good news: tens and hundreds of thousands of cases are recorded in the world when people were able to start a healthy life, even having practically sunk to the very bottom.
How to deal with bad habits? I, as a person who has encountered in my life both a strong alcohol addiction and an irresistible desire to smoke, will answer this way: only by the power of my own will and unconditional faith that I can, I can handle it (well, or that the Lord will help - whoever). I do not have recipes for quitting bad habits, which, of course, would suit everyone and everyone. All I have is my personal story about how I have not consumed alcohol at all for three years and have not smoked for six months. If you are interested, please follow me.
Once upon a time, in my student stormy youth, I gradually, imperceptibly for myself, became addicted to drinking. Beer first, then stronger drinks. In just a few years, I came to the conclusion that every weekend for me turned into a holiday of the god Bacchus. Outwardly, everything looked decent: I went to work, talked with friends. But inside myself, I already felt this trembling joyful feeling at the thought of the upcoming drink.
And then something happened that became the strongest catalyst for my further immersion in alcohol addiction - my closest friend died. The world collapsed and for three years I plunged into the darkness of eternal drinking, adventures in unknown apartments and hopeless confidence that this is forever.
What helped me? Only one eternal question to myself: how can I deal with bad habits? Even being at the very bottom of my life, I asked myself and God, is this really what I was born for, how can I get out of here and is it even possible. It was the persistence with which I asked myself these questions that led me for the first time to the conscious desire to try to quit drinking altogether. At first it happened for a couple of weeks, then there was a binge again. Then I managed to hold out a little more: three weeks, a month, one and a half, two ... I broke down, drank again, lost hope, but again and again in a drunken delirium and a hangover in the morning I asked myself the question: “How can I get out of all this?”
The turning point, as I now understand, was the period when I was able to stay sober for more than six months. After this period, I still broke again. But it was then that I realized that it is possible to live without alcohol, that the world can be bright, colorful and beautiful without a bottle! I remember that after drinking then for about 10 days and once again reaching almost delirium tremens, I stopped with the thought of how much I want to quit again - because now I knew how realistic it was to quit completely. Well, at least for the long term. This was repeated many times. The periods without alcohol were getting longer, and the breakdowns were getting shorter. After all, now I already knew: it is possible to stop drinking completely only by an effort of will.
I have not had a drink at all for three years now. I do not rule out that someday an alcoholic breakdown may occur again. I do not promise that this will not happen. But one thing I now know for 100%: I am sure that I am strong enough to stop drinking at any moment. I realized that the bad habit is, first of all, in my head.
I have now been a non-smoker for six months. The first three or four months were very difficult. Yes, and now sometimes so strongly pulls to pick up a cigarette. But now I know for sure that you just need to endure a longer period (the turning points, according to my observation, are 6-8 months) without a bad habit in order to understand how you can live without it, to realize that the world around you can be joyful and without slave dependencies.
Do not deceive yourself with myths that you can drink or smoke in moderation. Crossing the line once, you will cross it again and again. This is an axiom. Sink or swim. Quit completely - or continue to drink and smoke. No other is given.
Quitting a bad habit is real at any stage of addiction.
All you need is to want to get rid of it and constantly ask yourself how to do it. The answer will come.
When you stop drinking or smoking, you should always set yourself up for difficulties. But at the same time clearly realize that they will not be eternal. When you part with alcohol, at first it seems that the whole world has lost its colors, and now it will always be so. Not! You need to understand that in six months you will be able to live without your addictions, believe in it and be strong.
And the last thing: if you broke after a long abstinence, you can not execute yourself. Getting rid of any addiction is the way. Every attempt to quit that ends in a relapse is a step forward. By the way, some modern narcologists also talk about this. No need to punish yourself for turning back. This is just a regrouping of forces before the next decisive offensive. Believe in yourself, your loved ones, in the light - and everything will work out!
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When it comes to productivity, even the little things matter. Staying true to these habits will only hinder your progress.
Your personality is the totality of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, you make your path to success very difficult. The problem is that these habits work very insidiously, little by little hindering you, although you may not even notice this harm.
"The chains of our habits are too light for us to notice, and then become too strong for us to break." Warren Buffett
To fight bad habits, you need willpower. But research shows it's worth it, as willpower is critical to success.
University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman conducted a study that measured a student's intelligence level and willpower upon admission to university. Four years later, scientists analyzed the average scores of these students and found that willpower influenced the result twice as much as IQ.
The willpower needed to develop good habits (and fight bad ones) also becomes a reliable foundation for developing a work ethic and high productivity. Willpower is like a muscle - it takes practice to get stronger. To do this, it will be useful to get rid of the following bad habits:
1. Use your smartphone, tablet or laptop in bed
This habit is very serious, although people do not notice how much it harms the quality of sleep and productivity. Short wavelength blue light affects your mood, energy levels and sleep. The highest concentration of this light is found in sunlight in the morning. With such lighting in your body, the production of the sleep hormone melatonin is reduced, and you feel more alert. During the day, the amount of blue light decreases, melatonin begins to be produced, and you begin to want to sleep. In the evening, your brain does not expect light of this color to appear and is very sensitive to its influence.
Most of our favorite devices - laptops, tablets and smartphones - emit this blue light right in our faces. It interferes with the production of melatonin, which affects our ability to fall asleep and the quality of sleep in general. As we all know, poor quality sleep can be very bad for our condition the next day. The best thing to do is to try not to use these devices after dinner (watching TV is not so bad because we usually sit far enough away from it).
2. Surfing aimlessly on the Internet
To fully concentrate on the performance of a particular task, a person needs to do it for 15 minutes without a break. After that, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity, which is called the “flow state”. Research shows that people in a state of flow can work up to five times more efficiently than in normal conditions. When you get interrupted at the first urge to get the news, score your favorite team, or check Facebook, it takes you out of flow. Thus, in order to achieve the highest efficiency again, you will have to spend another 15 minutes. If you get distracted like that all the time, you may not be in a state of flow all day long.
3. Get distracted by the phone while talking
Nothing gets in the way of a conversation more than being distracted in the middle of it by replying to someone's message or even just looking at the screen. Try to fully focus on the conversation. You will find that you can get more benefit and enjoyment from it if you focus only on the conversation.
4. Use Multiple Notifications
Phone notifications are a real nightmare for productivity. It has been scientifically proven that productivity is drastically reduced if you are distracted by every signal from your smartphone or email. It may seem to someone that it is effective to find out about every message or letter received right away, but this is far from being the case. Instead of following through on your notifications, hoard messages and emails and reply to them at specific times (for example, check your email once an hour). This is the real way to work effectively.
5. Say "yes" when you need to say "no"
A study done at the University of California, San Francisco found that people who find it hard to say no to others are more likely to experience stress, emotional exhaustion, and even depression—things that stifle willpower. For many people, saying “no” is a task that requires a lot of effort. "No" is a powerful word to use when needed. If there is such a need, people with high emotional intelligence avoid phrases like "I don't think I can" or "I'm not sure." Turning down a new business expresses the importance of your current affairs and gives you the opportunity to finish them calmly. Just remember that giving up is an act of showing willpower that will allow you to develop it without the negative consequences of too many commitments.
6. Worry about energy vampire people
There will always be people in your life who know how to get under the skin of others and not get out of there. Every time you start thinking about the person who makes your blood boil, try to think of someone else that you love and respect. There are plenty of people who deserve your attention, and the last thing you need to do is waste your time and nerves thinking about those who don't matter.
7. Multitask during meetings
You should not give some business only part of your attention, especially meeting people. If the meeting is not important to you, then it was not necessary to attend at all. If it matters to you, then you need to give up other things for a while. Doing other things in meetings harms you because it makes it clear to others that you are more important.
8. Gossip
Gossipers take pleasure in other people's failures. It may seem fun at first to discuss someone's personal or professional problems, but over time it gets tiresome, makes you feel bad, and hurts other people. Instead of gossiping about other people's failures, focus on the positive things and what you can learn from interesting people.
"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and poor minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt
9. Don't take action until you're sure you'll succeed.
Most writers spend countless hours analyzing their characters and plots, and much of what they write ends up not being included in the book. They do this because they know that it takes time to develop an idea. Often we stop at the very beginning when we realize that our idea or product is not perfect. But how can you create something worthy without even starting and letting your ideas grow into something great over time? Writer Jodi Picoult put it perfectly on the dangers of perfectionism: “You can edit a badly written page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”
10. Compare yourself to other people
When your sense of satisfaction and pleasure in life begins to depend on comparison with others, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. If you are happy with what you have done, do not let someone else's opinion or someone else's achievements deprive you of this feeling. While it's hardly possible to stop thinking about people's opinions of you, you can try not to compare yourself to others and accept others' opinions with a healthy dose of skepticism. Thus, no matter what others say or do, your self-esteem will be determined only by you personally. No matter what people think about you at any given moment, it does not affect reality in any way.
Outcome
To fight these habits, you will have to develop your willpower, which in the end will have a positive effect on your career.
How often have you thought about how to get rid of a bad habit? This is not about smoking, drinking or overeating. It's about petty habits that annoy others, provoke conflict situations, make you feel shy in society and simply interfere with life.
Someone can live for years and not know for the time being that his champing does not give rest to others, while others struggle with nail biting for a long time and unsuccessfully. Common psychological bad habits include:
biting nails
biting your lips
Rip off the wounds
Slurp
snap your fingers
Gnawing pens, pencils
Whistle
Pick your nose/ears
If you are familiar with such manifestations, then you know how sometimes we are dependent on bad psychological habits. How to stop repeating the same manipulations? How to get rid of bad habits on your own? And what lies behind a seemingly harmless habit?
How to give up bad habits without the help of a specialist?
The psychological habits of a person are a direct consequence of the internal state, the result of experiences and stress. Often bad habits affect the perception of a person by others. A person spitting in conversation, periodically snapping his fingers and biting his nails is unlikely to endear society. Therefore, it is imperative to fight bad habits, not allowing them to progress.
There are two ways to get rid of such dependencies:
1. Make a decision to contact a psychologist to find out the reason for the emergence of such a habit, and follow his advice.
2. Try to figure out the problem yourself
In both the first and second cases, you need to clearly understand the reasons why you need to get rid of them. You also need to realize that no one, even the most qualified specialist, can save you from an obsessive problem without your desire and work. Your desire and understanding is the main key to success. And if you know how to give up bad habits, and what you need to do for this, then it is quite possible to do without the help of a psychologist. Of course, in this matter it is important not only, but also to purposefully go through restrictions, up to the complete disappearance of the habit.
How to quit bad habits: find out the causes
Actually, for what reasons does addiction arise, and what is it? Harmful psychological habits occur most often against the background of a constant load, during a stressful situation, with dangerous actions on the part of others. It can be:
Death of a relative, friend
Changing of the living place
Constant thoughts about lack of funds
Lack of demand at work
Loneliness
Uncertainty
Often bad habits affect relationships with others. For example, such a habit as picking your nose or ears with an object or a finger will frankly cause rejection in many. Therefore, you need to understand that you need to get rid of it. If you do not do this, but it can completely get out of control, once manifesting itself at the most inconvenient moment for you (like important business negotiations).
To begin with, establish exactly when you developed such a habit, after what event it happened, then figure out at what point it manifests itself and how it helps to cope with stress. Indeed, often the pleasure from such actions is “imaginary”, not real. A person gets pleasure not from the process itself, but from the sequence of actions: it seems that everything is under control, and it happens exactly as it should.
Some psychological habits of a person cannot be overcome forever. This is due to the fact that most of the actions occur on a subconscious level. Other actions need to be taken.
How to quit bad habits painlessly: popular methods
The best option is to replace a bad habit with. You just need to replace one habit with a similar one, with the same action. For example, the process of scratching, picking can be replaced by sorting out small details (beads, rosaries, fabrics with embossed patterns). If you want to gnaw and bite something all the time, then you can try chewing gum or candy.
The moment you "caught" yourself in a bad habit, switch to another area of action. If you have a "sedentary" work - get up for physical exercises, do physical exercises, and vice versa - active physical work should be replaced by rest. This will help the brain switch to other actions, and therefore forget about manipulation.
Breaking bad habits is hard. This process takes a lot of concentration, strength and perseverance. But, habits need to be changed. Over time, the habitual craving for, for example, biting your nails will weaken if you find something that you will do instead of this bad habit (occupy your hands with something else, switch attention to small details, perhaps it will help you to fiddle with a button or make hand massage).
When you need to know how to get rid of bad habits that are the result of nervous experiences, remember the psychological relief. Any of our bad habits is a warning, so the subconscious mind gives signs that indicate a constant tension of the nervous system. This needs to be corrected, because if irritants are not removed in a timely manner, bad psychological habits will progress in the near future.
Your bad habits don't make you better
Do not be afraid to get rid of bad habits that prevent you from enjoying life to the fullest. Remember, your life can be full of new emotions and impressions, in which there is no place for annoying manipulations. Breaking bad habits isn't easy, but they can be replaced initially, freeing up time for new activities that won't get in the way of your social interactions or your self-esteem. After all, bad habits have not made a single person better, and getting rid of them is a significant step forward!
Everyone knows that smoking is dangerous to health. It causes serious diseases such as lung and heart cancer. More people die from diseases caused by smoking than from car accidents. Unfortunately, while the total number of smokers is declining, the number of teenage smokers is increasing.
Teenagers are more likely to be addicted to smoking if:
Their friends or family members smoke;
They find it difficult to say no to friends or those they want to impress;
They have low self-esteem;
They find it difficult to deal with stress.
Some people start smoking to look cool in the eyes of others. But if a person hates tobacco smoke and dislikes smokers, he is unlikely to be impressed by smoking. You can make a much stronger impression if you look confident in your abilities and be yourself. Smoking makes your teeth and fingers yellow, and gives you bad breath (try sniffing an ashtray full of cigarette butts!).
Remember that you are responsible for your body, so make your own decisions and be proud of them. Smoking is an expensive habit that is very difficult to get rid of. Think about how you could spend the money you spend on cigarettes.
Alcohol
Drinking alcoholic beverages is allowed by law from the age of 18, but some try them before this age. Most likely, teenagers start drinking to appear more mature. In large quantities, alcohol destroys brain cells, causes vomiting (just imagine how it looks from the outside), and makes it difficult to make sane independent decisions.
This also applies to the decision to have or not to have sex. When drunk, some people agree to casual sex more easily than when sober. Then they regret it and feel guilty. In addition, when drunk, young people are more likely to forget about safety equipment and contraception. As a result, they can get a sexually transmitted disease, and girls can also become pregnant.
Remember that you are responsible for your body.
Whatever age you decide to try an alcoholic drink, it's important to remember to be in moderation and never get drunk to the point where you don't know what you're doing. It is especially dangerous to drive a car while drunk.
Other drugs
It is dangerous to abuse any drugs or medications. They damage nerve cells and other parts of the body. Many drugs are addictive, which means that it will be very difficult to stop them later. In a state of drug intoxication, it is difficult to make sane decisions and you can do things that you will later regret very much.
Why do some people use drugs?
People use drugs for various reasons. Some want to experiment, curious to experience a new state. Others accept them under pressure from acquaintances. For others, drugs initially help to cope with stress, get rid of boredom, or dare to do something in defiance of their parents. If you are concerned about a drug problem, you should talk to an adult you trust or call an anonymous helpline.
About bad habits
Think about what you would do if someone suggested you try:
Cigarettes;
drugs;
Alcoholic drinks.
Practice in front of a mirror, with your parents, or with other adults. What would you say in such a case? How would you respond if someone teased you or made fun of you? So you can be very well prepared for the real situation.
This is the bottom line. But the evening of "physical stay together" is organized in such a way that we are not separated.
Firstly (and, in my opinion, most importantly), the TV in the house turns on only after the child goes to bed. The exception is cartoons, we watch not every day, no more than half an hour, we break full-length ones into several evenings. That is, the box does not take away the child from the mother, nor the mother from the child.
Secondly, when I am in the kitchen, the child sits down to draw / play / study at the kitchen table, and not at his own. "Mom, look how I am! .. Mom, how is it here? .." - we are together, there is nothing to "pay". To illustrate: is homework English "devoting" time to the child? In the kitchen,
without straining, in three months we solved almost the entire Bonk notebook of the first year of study.
Accordingly, thirdly, things that require mother's concentration, and, on the contrary, do not require children's twitches at all, are shifted either back - during her evening walks in the yard, or forward - to the late evening, when she is already sleeping.
Necessary and sufficient time? Hmm ... Two hours, from seven to nine (not counting our 15 "iron" minutes), spent in contact with the child, IMHO, is enough for everything in the world, you just have to turn them around to face them. :)
It remains to add only that the recipe is designed for three eaters - dad, mom and 1 (One) first grader. :)
11.10.2003 00:15:46, JaneZ
Yes, I perfectly understand how it is possible to optimize joint pastime and lessons in the kitchen - this is our option (although I think that everything should have its place and lessons should be taught at the desk, this disciplines and then the attitude is more serious). But the problem is that purely physically we are together for very little time. I have a new job. In the morning I leave before the baby, the nanny takes her to school. All communication in the morning comes down to getting up and having breakfast together, while we are both so sleepy that you can’t really call it communication. In the best scenario, I arrive home at 20-00, and usually not earlier than 20-30 (sometimes at 21-00). We have dinner, check the lessons, read a chapter from another book at night (reading is a must). We live together with a child. So, on the one hand, my work is our only source of income, and on the other hand, it leaves absolutely no time and energy to communicate with the baby. And this bothers me more and more, just a vicious circle. 13.10.2003 12:53:00,