Nitu Mohanka breaks down the habit loop: trigger, behavior, reward. To change a habit, swap one element. If you eat dessert after dinner, keep the trigger and reward but replace dessert with fruit. The dopamine hit stays the same, but the habit shifts.
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If you constantly struggle with your habits and you want to create new ones for yourself, understand how habit gets created in our mind. It's called the habit loop, and there are 3 elements to this habit loop. One is a trigger, second is the behavior, and third is the reward. Every time you have to change any habit, you have to change any of these 3 things in this loop. Until you change these 3 things, your habit will not change. So say for example, you want to change the habit of having dessert after dinner every day. So what is the trigger over here? End of dessert. What is the behavior over here? The dessert. And what is the reward? That instant kick of dopamine that you get after having that dessert. So, all right, what can we do is we cannot change the trigger here, right? After dinner, you need something. So maybe replace the behavior of having the dessert with something which is more healthy, maybe a fruit, you know. And then you will not be able to change the reward because the reward is already In the loop. So you get the reward, the dopamine, of having the fruit. Slowly, your loop will get adjusted to the new behavior, and that is how you will be able to change your habit. Don't try to not take the dessert, try to replace it with something more healthy, and you will be able to keep the habit loop intact but installing a better habit instead. Try this and let me know in the comment if it works for you. Take care, all the best.