How to Replace Your Bad Habits in Sports Betting

With 2014 behind us and 2015 still mostly ahead of us, I have been taking a lot of time lately to talk about making changes through New Year’s betting resolutions and leaving bad habits behind.  Here are some changes that I suggest:

• Get consistent with your money management plan.
• Get consistent with your betting strategy too.
• Replace a betting strategy that is not working.
• Keep improving one that is providing you with some success instead of abandoning it too soon and starting over. 
• Get more involved with your community.
• Focus on a single sport.
• Don’t bet emotionally.

But how do you actually replace bad habits and create good ones in their place?  If you have ever tried to make a major change in your life or even a minor one, you know just how hard it is and how easy it is to get discouraged.  Here are some tips:

• Try to focus on changing just one habit for now.  Do not overwhelm yourself by taking on too many habits at once.  Only take on what you can handle.  That way you can feel encouraged when you succeed at a modest goal instead of discouraged when you fail with a huge one. 
• Figure out what the root cause of your bad habit is.  Our bad habits are like bad adaptations that we make to try and serve our needs.  Even though they don’t work, we think they do, so we keep doing them.  If you can figure out the need your bad habit is addressing, you may be able to tackle the problem at its source.
• Ask yourself what is triggering your bad habits.  Most of the time there is something that “sets off” any bad habit.  If you can reduce your exposure to your bad habit triggers, you will feel less of an urge to follow through with those habits.  For example, betting when you are upset about something else may prompt you to make foolish decisions. 
• Start a new, smarter habit.  It is much easier to replace a bad habit with a good one than simply stop doing anything.
• Get help from someone else.  An accountability partner can help you to stay on target with your habit changes and improvements.  Ask another bettor online or even someone you live with to help you enact change in your life.

Maybe the most important thing to realise about changing your habits is that you will not do a perfect job of it.  Hopefully you will do better and better with time, but there will be the occasional lapse, no matter what you do.  Don’t let your lapses turn into relapses by condemning yourself when you make these mistakes.  Acknowledge that you messed up and press on, giving yourself another chance to do the right thing.  Over time you should make fewer of these mistakes, and eventually, the new good habits you have created will become a part of your personality.