As a wellness coach I get a lot of clients who feel stuck, they have a health goal but there are sabotaging habits that stand in their way. Want to lose weight but get the evening munchies? Want to exercise in the mornings but have trouble getting to bed early and prefer to stay up late watching TV? Want to quit drinking but feel awkward at parties or don’t want your friends to think you’re boring? We can set the perfect goal, work it out step by step but if we aren’t aware of our bad habits controlling our behaviours we will continue to feel helpless. One of the biggest challenges busy parents and corporate executives face is breaking free from bad habits. Whether it’s procrastinating, emotional eating, or scrolling on your phone late at night, bad habits can derail your productivity, affect your well-being and your relationships, and leave you feeling stuck. But there’s the good news: change is possible. We can work together to bring back your ownership and replace those habits with healthier choices that you can be much more intentional about.
As a wellness coaching service, we specialize in helping individuals like you transform their lives by addressing the root causes of unhealthy habits and guiding you toward lasting change. Let’s dive into how self-development can empower you to overcome bad habits and create a life that feels balanced and fulfilling.
Why Breaking Bad Habits is Hard
Breaking bad habits isn’t just about willpower. Habits are deeply rooted in nueroscience, the more aware your are about your brain’s reward system the greater your ability to make consistent progress. Every time you repeat a habit—good or bad—it strengthens neural pathways, making it easier to default to that behavior in the future. For example, reaching for sugary snacks during stressful moments may feel comforting in the moment, but over time, it becomes an automatic response- this is exactly where mindfulness comes in, shedding light on the trigger through awareness and then mindfully selecting your action rather than being run on autopilot.
For busy parents juggling family responsibilities or corporate executives managing demanding schedules, these habitual behaviors can work in your favor or to your peril so choose wisely. Here are some tools where you can rewire your brain and build habits that support your long-term goals.
Step 1: Identify Your Triggers
Every habit has a trigger—a situation, emotion, or thought that sets it into motion. We have worked with clients who have some of these ‘automatic’ responses due to habit formation
-When frustrated with oneself look to online shopping to feel better about themselves
-Reach for a drink when in a social situation so they are feel outgoing and likeable
-Check emails late at night when anxious about an upcoming busy day
-When overwhelmed with a situation start complaining to avoid taking action
-Procrastinate when there’s a new project because starting something feels scary
Awareness unlocks our blindspots, start by keeping a journal to understand your subconscious programming. Write down when and where the habit occurs, what you were feeling, and what action followed. Neelam Harjani, graduate of Harvard Medical School, will help you unlock this awareness is the first step toward taking control of your behaviour.
Step 2: Replace, Don’t Eliminate
If a monkey grabbed your phone what’s the easiest way to get it back? Trying to catch it and break your phone out of it’s grip is very challenging. Simply give it a banana, it will immediately drop your phone to grab what it prefers to have. Similarly, the mind is like this monkey. What you resist persists, the more you tell yourself to stop smoking and condemn yourself for this habit the tighter its grip around you. Instead replace the habit, we have had great success with smokers who have kicked the habit once they practice breathing techniques and every time they feel like reaching for a cigarette they do their breathwork instead and the calm they feel relaxes the impulse to smoke. Switch to healthier habits, the substitution methodology have proven to be far more effective than sheer will power.
Step 3: Start Small and Be Consistent
Overcoming bad habits is a gradual and incremental process, aim for a reduction rather than going cold turkey. This helps us leverage on the power of emotion. Emotion is the engine behind action, and when we expect ourselves to radically transform overnight we set ourselves up to fail, having these loft goals result in feeling disappointed, frustrated and annoyed with ourselves. This causes a feeling of victimhood and hopelessness which propels the bad behaviour, the mental narrative would echo ‘I can’t do it, I suck, this feels impossible” these feelings will drive you to whatever your addiction in the hopes of getting some temporary relief from these feelings thereby strengthening the habit. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, improving by just 1% every day leads to significant results over time, it’s the power of compounding. Winning small goals let’s you feel ‘I got this, I can do it, I met my target today’, small changes daily and over a few months the habit has hardly any pull over you, because your’ve consistently chipped at it knowing that you in fact have the power to change- that belief is what enables the transformative shift.
For busy individuals, this means focusing on manageable changes. For example:
- Limit phone usage by setting a 10-minute timer for social media scrolling.
- Spend just 5 minutes practicing deep breathing to replace stress-induced behaviors.
- Swap your daily sugary coffee with a healthier alternative once a week.
Consistency is more important than intensity. The more you repeat the new behavior, the stronger those neural pathways become.
Step 4: Leverage Accountability
We are communal beings, there is an immense power with having someone one your side, rooting for you, this is where wellness coaching comes in. A coach provides guidance, encouragement, and tools to help you stay on track. For busy parents and executives, this external support can ease the burden of self-discipline and provide clarity on how to align your habits with your goals.
In fact, a study published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine found that individuals who worked with a wellness coach were 2.5 times more likely to sustain positive behavior changes compared to those who tried on their own.
Step 5: Celebrate Progress, Not Perfection
Know that time is on your side, nature has it’s timing so don’t be too hard on yourself in expecting massive change right away. Allow some margin of error, if you need to recommit feel a freedom to do so, your wellness coach will never make you feel shameful if you experience setbacks along the way, it’s our job to unpack it and understand the feelings behind the behaviours. Instead of focusing on perfection, celebrate small wins. Each time you make a better choice, you’re reinforcing the identity you want to build. When you know you can do it that’s already half the battle won!
For example:
- Did you resist the urge to check your phone at dinner? That’s a win!
- Did you substitute one unhealthy snack today? Celebrate it!
These small victories add up over time and create positive momentum.
How Wellness Coaching Can Help
At Inspire Wellness, we understand that busy parents and corporate executives face unique challenges when it comes to breaking bad habits. Our personalized wellbeing coaching programs are designed to fit into your hectic schedule and provide you with actionable strategies to make lasting changes.
Through one-on-one sessions, we’ll help you:
- Identify and understand the root causes of your habits.
- Develop practical, sustainable strategies to replace harmful behaviors.
- Build resilience and stay motivated on your journey of self-development.
Invest in Yourself
Working with a coach Neelam Harjani is the first step that requires the most courage. You are telling yourself that you are worth the life you envision for yourself, this is rooted in self love. Without self love we are victim to our habits, we fear and resist change and we are not coachable. Being able to serve yourself on a holistic level by being who you intrinsically know you are capable of drives you to your potential- —it’s about creating a life that feels aligned with your values and goals. As a busy professional or parent, you deserve to thrive, not just survive.
If you’re ready to take the first step toward overcoming bad habits and unlocking your full potential, contact us today to learn how our wellness coaching services can help you transform your life.
Start small, stay consistent, and watch how self-development can lead to extraordinary results.