Your bad habits can adversely affect you and your entire family. This is especially true when you have kids. Kids can learn bad habits from their parents. If you’re a parent or you influence kids, you should eliminate your bad habits by replacing them with good habits.
Handling Stress
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
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 realised it and stopped it. You can cause a lot of financial issues just by spending money without thought.
Worrying
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.
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.
There is no doubt that each of these bad habits negatively impacts your family. You are at risk of passing these bad habits on to your kids and to your partner.
Which habits do you need to change?