Replace Them with Good Ones

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If you want to quit smoking, practice breathing exercises when you feel the urge to smoke. If you want to stop eating sugary snacks, refrain from buying them and replace them with nutritious, wholesome snacks. If you want to stop snoozing, immediately get out of bed and start moving.

If you wish to stop focusing on the negative traits of other people, focus on their positive attributes instead. If you desire to stop complaining about everything that happens around you, contemplate and write down things you are grateful for. If you want to quit wasting time scrolling through social media, grab a book and start reading instead. If you feel overwhelmed because you are thinking of too many things at the same time, try meditating instead.

A well-established principle of Yogi mental training, as explained by Yogi Ramacharaka, is that "a bad habit of thought or action is more easily eradicated by replacing it with a good habit—one that is directly opposed to the habit you desire to eliminate."

“To tear out a bad habit by the roots, requires almost superhuman strength of will, but to crowd it out by nursing a good habit in its place, is far more easier and seems to be nature’s plan. The good habit will gradually crowd the bad one until it cannot exist, and then after a final struggle for life, it will expire.”

Eliminating a bad habit only through sheer willpower is extremely difficult. It's easier if you replace it with a good one.