Habits are your usual tendencies or behaviors and may tend to occur subconsciously. The state of health, happiness, and success are mainly a result of your daily habits. If you’re not in good shape, unsuccessful, or sad, your poor and unhealthy habits can be a factor or the primary culprit.
Why is it hard to change unhealthy habits?
Bad habits can ruin your life and hinder you from achieving your goals. And not only can they waste your time and energy, they can also cause multiple health issues. But while most of us know all these, it’s a sad fact that we still do them.
Psychology Today explains it requires extra motivation or confidence if you’re trying to go against the default action in your brain. If you’re unsure why you’re changing, don’t believe you’re making the right choice, or doubt if what you’re doing will work, you’ll likely go back to your usual behavior.
What causes unhealthy habits?
In most business process outsourcing or BPO companies, the most common triggers of an unhealthy lifestyle are stress, irate clients, difficult bosses, overwhelming workload, and graveyard shifts. According to Call Center Beat, the common unhealthy habits of BPO employees include:
1. A.M. Bar Hopping
Most BPO firms in the Philippines follow the office hours of their foreign business counterparts. Thus, it’s common that BPO employees work at night and sleep in the morning. They get off from work before sunrise. And just like other employees they enjoy happy hour and bar hopping to unwind and socialize. The difference though is that they do this before daybreak.
2. Chronic Smoking
Though not proven by experts, some BPO employees claim that smoking eases their stress and calm their nerves. But contrary to what they say, chain smoking may cause them more harm than good. It can lead to serious health problems such as lung cancer, heart disease, premature aging, and blood circulation issues.
3. Excessive Caffeine
Since its normal for people to sleep at night, graveyard shift employees fight sleepiness with caffeine boost from coffee, soft drinks, energy drinks, and food supplements. Though some of them may have good effects on the body, too much of anything is still bad.
4. Too Much Fast Food
Looking for and eating food during breaks in the middle of the night is another struggle for BPO workers. Unless they’re willing to cook and bring packed food, oily, salty, and fatty meals from fast food joints, convenience stores, and vending machines are the options they only have.
How to change unhealthy habits?
Although most companies give great BPO healthcare benefits for their employees, promotion of a healthy employee lifestyle is way better. Having 24/7 gyms, pantries with healthy home-cooked meals, and recreation lounges can help employees stay away from such unhealthy habits.
However, despite the employers’ effort to give these, nothing will change if you don’t have the motivation and drive to change. Acknowledge your unhealthy habits because that is always the first step toward change. To guide you to a healthy lifestyle, check out these 8 Health Hacks for Filipino Call Center Agents.
Sources: psychologytoday.com | callcenterbeat.com | opinion.inquirer.net | pri.org | buzz.definitelyfilipino.net
