Spring is all about renewal. Spring cleaning is not confined to only your bedroom. Cleaning your mind, body, and soul is essential too. Spring is the perfect time to take a second chance at your resolutions that didn’t that did not make it past January. Like your wardrobe, habits make up who you are. Unfortunately, they are just as hard to throw out.

Habits are hard to tackle and take effort, but the first step is understanding. Timothy W. Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, a co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, and the director of the UCLA Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, says, “people come to rely on chocolate, food, coffee, alcohol, drugs, shopping, or what have you because they aren’t sure how to self-soothe when experiencing uncomfortable emotions like anxiety…We should not fight the fact that our bodies and our brains respond to little morsels of pleasure — that’s what it’s supposed to do. And we must embrace that pain, anxiety, suffering, and all that stuff is part of human life, and we need that, probably more than we need pleasure.” Admitting to a habit dramatically increases the chances of eventually quitting it.

Although it may seem like quitting “cold turkey” may be the easiest way, it can lead to more suffering. That is typically why so many of our new year’s resolutions fail. The next step is to take action. Replace unhealthy habits with healthy ones. The process for many will be slow. It takes roughly 60 days to form a new habit fully. Fong states, “It doesn’t necessarily feel good to cope with uncomfortable feelings, but it does feel good to know that you have different options to deal with stress and emotional pain.” Combatting negative emotions that accompany quitting a habit will be one of your most significant battles. Remember that failure is okay. View failure as a lesson instead of an excuse to quit. Fong clarifies. “It should reduce the harm the behavior has been doing to you as little as possible. Ten cigarettes a year isn’t harmful to you in the long run — it won’t raise your level of cancer or create an elevated risk of heart attacks. If you went from a thousand cigarettes a year to 10 a year, your smoking habit isn’t gone, but the harm is. Your focus should not be so much about winning or losing, but when you’re making changes, reducing the harm from that habit.”

Take a step back and think about your habits. Investing your time into yourself and your well-being will pay off. Make sure your practices are attainable, and keep a positive mindset. No matter your habit, it’s possible to change for the better. Happy Spring cleaning!