The Impact of Bad Habits on Your Family

Your bad habits can adversely affect you and your entire family. This is especially true when you have kids. Kids learn most of their bad habits from their parents.

If you’re a parent or you influence kids, you may want to do all you can to eliminate your bad habits by replacing them with good habits.

Poor Methods for Handling Stressful Events

How you respond to stress in your life is usually a habit by the time you’re an adult. If you were not taught good ways of dealing with stress during childhood, you probably repeat whatever you learned from the adults around you. If you know you deal with stress poorly, study good ways to deal with it so you don’t pass it on to your kids.

Spending Money Impulsively

If you observed your father or mother spending money on unneeded purchases on impulse, it’s more than likely you do it too unless you’ve realized it and stopped it. You can cause a lot of financial issues just by spending money without thought.

Bad Ideas about Money

Adding to the above, bad ideas about money in general can be passed on to the kids. If you fear money due to not having enough, or fear not having enough, you may make some very bad choices that will negatively impact you and your family.

Worrying Obsessively

Demonstrating constant worrying about things you cannot change will also rub off on kids. They see their parent, the person they most trust in the world to keep them safe, being worried about everything. It makes them feel unsure and sometimes act out badly. If you want to stop worrying, you may have to get professional help - especially if it also comes with inherited anxiety.

Being a Picky Eater

Some picky eaters have a reason they are the way they are, such as being on the autistic spectrum and having texture issues, but others are only that way due to copying their parents. If you are a picky eater, you can be picky without demonstrating it to the kids. Plus, don’t force your family to do without meals they love due to your problem.

Not Expressing Yourself

You teach people how to treat you and if you never express your thoughts, ideas, and feelings about any situation, no one will know how you feel. Then you may feel as if you’re being mistreated and act out on that too, causing a rift in relationships.

Poor Communication Skills

Part of not expressing yourself may have to do with poor communication skills. Some people get very nervous talking to people (even their family) about any issues they’re having. So, they keep it to themselves. This is not a good idea. Instead, learn to be open and positive with your family.

Inability to Maintain Good Relationships

If you cannot communicate, you’re over-worrying, and you don’t like confrontation, it can be hard to maintain good relationships with your family. Building and maintaining good relationships can be learned by example. When you show your kids that you're spending time with your best friend alone at lunch once a month, they learn something from that.

Not Saying "I’m Sorry"

You’ve heard people joke about not being able to say they’re sorry, but this is not a good quality for someone to have. If you are one of those people, learn how to do it now. It’s easy. Just state what you did wrong and then say, "I am very sorry." No, if’s and’s or but’s.

Eating a Poor Diet

Definitely, diet is passed on to kids. Think about how children from all over the world eat interesting food based on what their parents eat. This proves that taste is a matter of what you are used to. If your parents demonstrated and fed you a bad diet, unless you work toward change you’re going to do the same with your kids.

There is no doubt that each of these bad habits negatively impacts your family. What’s worse is that you are at risk of passing these types of bad habits on to your kids. Even spouses can catch bad habits from each other.

Related Reading: How To Change Bad Habits - Free Self Help Online Guide

The Impact of Bad Habits on Your Friends

There are some bad habits that even your good friends will not stick around for. For this reason, you may want to notice if you do any of these bad habits. If you do, you’ll want to apologize for it and stop doing it. You may even be able to get some of your friends to help you manage some of your bad habits.

* Gossiping – The truth is, if you gossip to one friend, the friend you’re gossiping with is going to assume you gossip about them to your other friends. What’s more, most people will not keep secrets so they’re going to tell the friend you gossiped about. This is not a good look. If you find yourself talking about others in a negative way, train yourself to start saying nice things instead until you stop talking about people when they’re not around at all.

* Not Making Time for Friends – We all get busy in our lives but if you don’t set aside time to spend with your friends, you will lose them. People move on relatively fast. Say no to more than three get-togethers and they’ll likely stop asking. Put time with friends as a priority in your calendar. You don’t have to do it every day or even every week, but enough that you still know the person.

* Not Cutting Ties When Needed – Sometimes we maintain bad friendships out of habit too. If you have anyone in your life who makes you feel bad about yourself and does not lift you up or others up, let them go.

* Not Initiating the Contact That You Crave – If you’re an introvert or simply shy, it can be hard to initiate the contacts that you need in your life. If you find yourself not spending time with friends that are important to you, and you haven’t for a long time, try initiating the contact you crave to restart those friendships.

* Not Showing Your Love for Your Friends – If you really care for your friends, make the time to show them. Send them neat articles you think they’ll like, Groupon deals you know they will want to take, and cards for their special days.

* Being Negative – The truth is, some of us are more negative by nature than others. The problem is, negativity is a huge turnoff to most of the population, and it’s not fun to be around. Even negative people don’t like being around other negative people. Try to turn thoughts into positives in your mind, or focus on the positives when you can. Stop voicing negativity unless it’s very important.

* Not Being Open and Vulnerable – Feeling love from your friends and giving love back to your friends requires that you are open and vulnerable to them. The only way to really do this is to focus on spending time with your friends more often so you can truly know each other.

* Not Being Consistent – If you decide to embark on improving your friendships, don’t start and then stop. This is especially true if you’ve been a bad friend lately. Get out your calendar and set up times that you can focus on your friends.

If you can turn this around, you’ll get better at maintaining long-term friendships. Nothing really is better than making new friends and keeping them around long term. If you have ever wondered why you can’t make good friends, check yourself to find out if you have any of these bad habits that impact friendships.

What’s your biggest issue? How do you handle it – or can you think of any additional tips you can share with others if you don’t have an issue with this in your life?
Share them with us in our Comments – or share this blog post on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you feel it could help someone you know.


Cheers, Helene Malmsio

Related Reading: How To Change Bad Habits - Free Self Help Online Guide

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