The chains of habit are often too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken, meaning that one is often unaware of how bad a habit is until it has a grip on you - like when you start smelling the stench from the stacks of unwashed dishes.

Many things we do are habitual, but the good ones will move you forward while the bad will set the car in reverse. Therefore, the first step in breaking a bad habit is to find out why you find this action compelling. Do you leave the stack of dishes unwashed so that you can quickly tune in to your favourite talk show or spend more time on the Internet? Look closer and realise the trade-offs, your kitchen becomes a smelly mess when you leave the dishes unwashed. By then, you should know that you've developed an unhealthy habit and it's time to change your ways.

According to Denis Healy, president of the Institute of Business Technology and trainer for the personal efficiency programme, "The process of change is through awareness (realising that you behave in a certain way), acceptance (recognising that you habitually behave that way) and taking action (repeatedly perform in a new and better way)."

If you want to break out from your old patterns, you just need to replace the bad with the good. As Dorothy Spry, occupational health psychologist advises, "Before even beginning to break a bad habit, you should already have a good habit in the pipeline to replace it."

At times, an old habit will try to sneak itself back in while you're trying to install the new habit. You should resist getting back to your old ways and reinforce the new habit with greater vigour. It helps to publicise your resolutions so that everyone else will know if you've succumbed, after all, no-one likes to appear as weak-willed.

Don't try to change your ways dramatically but break the challenge down into manageable bites. For example, if you're a serial smoker trying to kick the habit, reduce the number of sticks day by day so that it'll appear less daunting.

The model with her first runway walk in mind and the athlete who has eyes for the gold trophy will train hard to achieve their goals through discipline. Likewise, if we truly want to break our bad habits, we too must ruthlessly display the same amount of single-mindedness.

Conquer your bad habits

• 1. Confront your bad habit
• 2. Take action by replacing it with a good habit
• 3. Check your new behaviour to see if it's working
• 4. Focus exclusively on your new, empowering habit
• 5. Visualise yourself with the new habit
• 6. Publicise your resolutions

Source: Chuck Gallozzi, Breaking bad habits, www.personal-development.com