Let’s face it; we all develop routines in our lives. Some of them are healthy and others are not so healthy. Routines are nothing more than habits, and to break the cycle of habit you must first change your belief system. We all have nagging problems we face each day but what we don’t realize is that, we can never break the routine by focusing on the habit itself.

When you focus on your bad habits or routines, you keep yourself locked in a never ending recirculation of the same old lifestyle. If you have a problem such as smoking, you can’t stop by trying to quit because you put yourself in a mindset that you are always trying to quit.

The better approach is to stop focusing on the bad habits and routines and start focusing on where you see yourself in the future. Now I know that isn’t always an easy thing to do but you can start with a little time management. Using time management and sticking to it, can help you breaks the routines. If I wanted to quit smoking, I would sit down and figure out just how much of my time each day is spent smoking. I would write down all the benefits of not smoking and then I would make a list of the things I could do with that time that would be more productive for me.

The next step is to ask yourself if you can stop this habit just for today. You should have enough self worth to accept such a challenge. If you can make it one day without your habit then tomorrow you can ask yourself again, “can I quit just for today”? Asking the question repeatedly will help you to form new beliefs about what is really important to you.

Soon enough, you will realize the insanity of your routine and then you will have the power to change it. I know it’s difficult to break old habits but you have to start somewhere, even if that means starting at the bottom. Doing so will help you build character and you will begin to see a purpose for your life.