6 Negative Habits You Must Replace With Positive Ones (Even When It’s The Last Thing You Want To Do)

Only making habits do not count — doing the right one does.

We’ve been told from our childhood that efforts make everything. But if you’re not putting the effort in the right place, you cannot dig the soil, let alone achieve a habit.

Habits do require consistency, but you want to make sure you’re focusing on the right one. Positive habits can be mistaken for negative ones if not guided properly. Without guidance, you might not even realize the difference. Eventually, you’ll consider it the norm.

To stay away from that, here are 6 negative habits you should know to change them to positive ones and set your mental standard high.

Let’s get started.

1. Free → Cost

The book 48 Laws of Power has a law 40, namely, “despise free lunches.”

Jordan Peterson talks about how nothing is free — everything has a catch or a hidden obligation. Things like free lunches and free gifts may sound like generosity, but they’re meant to empower people into tricking you owe them.

No. There’s nothing bad about a free lunch coming from your fellow friends, family, or long-known employee. But if a free lunch is coming from someone you hardly know and just met, it may be a sign of someone trying to benefit from you.

What can you do about it? Pay your share. Peterson says: “what has worth is worth paying for.”

Instead of letting others pay your money, you go ahead or do it. In some cases, if you cannot, allow yourself to buy a dessert or a decent cup of coffee. Do not let any burden weigh you down.

2. Owe → Friendship

There’s a fine line between people you say to:

• “You owe me big time.”
• “It’s my pleasure.”

The first is an acquaintance, and the latter is a friend. You never treat your friends by telling them you did them a favor and now you owe them (except for a joke, of course.)

If you need good friends in your life, people who care about you, you need to move away from treating them like an acquaintance to treating them like a friend.

Don’t do them a favor. Don’t let them help and blurb about it. Offer them help on your own.

Stop thinking friends are for nothing. Maybe you have never explored the realms of friendship and don’t know how good it feels. Friendship is not 1 for 1 — it’s standing up when needed.

3. Overthinking → Smart thinking

73% of young adults overthink, according to a study by the University of Michigan.

But wise people convert their (over)thinking to (smart)thinking. They use overthinking to their benefit using the model psychologists and philosophers described. Some of them are:

• The First Principles: where you boil things down to the point where they’re free from assumptions, mistakes, and misconceptions.
• The Allegory of the Cave: escaping the prisoner's cave of mind to seek true knowledge.
• Categorical Imperative: make morally justified decisions by considering the consequences if they were to be applied as a universal rule.

There are many theories to support and help with your thinking. Use these means to refine your overthinking so you’re left with the fine gel-thick cream of knowledge.

With this cream, you can make good decisions. Use overthinking to your advantage.

4. Blindness → Kindness

When people take care of you, return their kindness.

Don’t go blind over their caring and efforts. People who take care of you (even if it is little) deserve kindness and appreciation. In today’s world, it takes almost nothing to throw anyone under the bus.

When you have good people around you, respect them and be kind to them. Never turn a blind eye to them.

Understand that a lot of people play their part in your lives, and if it weren’t for the garbage pickers, farmers, and product makers, you would never accomplish much.

Your life is a product of everyone’s efforts. Appreciate them when you can because all you can do for these people is to repay your kindness using good words.

Showing kindness is also a sign of being a giver, someone who not only receives compliments but also gives to others.

5. Idealize — Inspire

Nobody can live up to your expectations, necessarily not celebrities, dancers, and singers.

Those people are in it for fame and money. Do not idealize these people and behave like them. Don’t idealize their films or actions without knowing the reality of their lives.

• Just take inspiration but stay grounded in your own values.

Avoid becoming overly attached to movie characters, which can negatively impact your personality. Instead, focus on learning lessons and drawing inspiration from movies.

Do not blindly label things as good just because celebrities endorse them. You have your own life and responsibilities, so avoid drifting into idealizing and copying others.

Hold tight to your personality — it’s what and who you are.

6. Make money for effort → Make an effort for money

• Money doesn’t come without some effort.

You’ve been looking in the wrong place, if you believe that. Money is a product of your effort.

You cannot just suppose money will come while you sit on your chair and do nothing. Do something for money to come. Make some effort, and break a sweat. Then that money you earn is truly yours, gained through learning and applied skills.

Funny how putting effort into making money can make you forget about other things you once desired to buy. Perhaps that’s why some people who were once poor focus so much on their future purchases, but when they become rich, they end up buying nothing.

Change your perspective. Money comes through effort, not by being idle.

Final thoughts:

Positive and negative habits look alike, but they’re different.

There’s a fine line between them, one you cannot see from the naked eye. In the busy hustle and bustle of your day, use the above 6 habits to remain on the path of self-improvement.