BY LEO BABAUTA
6. Know your motivations, and
be sure they’re strong.
Write them down in your plan. You have to be very clear why you’re doing this,
and the benefits of doing it need to be clear in your head. If you’re just
doing it for vanity, while that can be a good motivator, it’s not usually
enough. We need something stronger. For me, I quit smoking for my wife and
kids. I made a promise to them. I knew if I didn’t smoke, not only would they
be without a husband and father, but they’d be more likely to smoke themselves
(my wife was a smoker and quit with me).
7. Don’t start right away. In your plan, write down a start date. Maybe
a week or two from the date you start writing out the plan. When you start
right away (like today), you are not giving the plan the seriousness it
deserves. When you have a “Quit Date” or “Start Date”, it gives that date an
air of significance. Tell everyone about your quit date (or start date). Put it
up on your wall or computer desktop. Make this a Big Day. It builds up
anticipation and excitement, and helps you to prepare.
8. Write down all your obstacles. If you’ve tried this habit change before
(odds are you have), you’ve likely failed. Reflect on those failures, and
figure out what stopped you from succeeding. Write down every obstacle that’s
happened to you, and others that are likely to happen. Then write down how you
plan to overcome them. That’s the key: write down your solution before the obstacles arrive, so you’re
prepared.
9. Identify your triggers. What situations trigger your current habit?
For the smoking habit, for example, triggers might include waking in the
morning, having coffee, drinking alcohol, stressful meetings, going out with
friends, driving, etc. Most habits have multiple triggers. Identify all of them
and write them in your plan.
10. For every single trigger,
identify a positive habit you’re going to do instead. When you first wake in the morning, instead
of smoking, what will you do? What about when you get stressed? When you go out
with friends? Some positive habits could include: exercise, meditation, deep
breathing, organizing, decluttering, and more.
“Habit is habit, and
not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a
time.” – Mark Twain
11. Plan a support system. Who will you turn to when you have a strong
urge? Write these people into your plan. Support forums online are a great tool
as well — I used a smoking cessation forum on about.com when I quit smoking,
and it really helped. Don’t underestimate the power of support — it’s really
important.
12. Ask for help. Get your family and friends and co-workers
to support you. Ask them for their help, and let them know how important this
is. Find an AA group in your area. Join online forums where people are trying
to quit. When you have really strong urges or a really difficult time, call on
your support network for help. Don’t smoke a cigarette, for example, without
posting to your online quit forum. Don’t have a drop of alcohol before calling
your AA buddy.
13. Become aware of self-talk. You talk to yourself, in your head, all the
time — but often we’re not aware of these thoughts. Start listening. These
thoughts can derail any habit change, any goal. Often they’re negative: “I
can’t do this. This is too difficult. Why am I putting myself through this? How
bad is this for me anyway? I’m not strong enough. I don’t have enough
discipline. I suck.” It’s important to know you’re doing this.
14. Stay positive. You will have negative thoughts — the
important thing is to realize when you’re having them, and push them out of
your head. Squash them like a bug! Then replace them with a positive thought.
“I can do this! If Leo can do it, so can I!” :)
15. Have strategies to defeat
the urge. Urges are going to
come — they’re inevitable, and they’re strong. But they’re also temporary, and
beatable. Urges usually last about a minute or two, and they come in waves of
varying strength. You just need to ride out the wave, and the urge will go
away. Some strategies for making it through the urge: deep breathing,
self-massage, eat some frozen grapes, take a walk, exercise, drink a glass of
water, call a support buddy, post on a support forum.
16. Prepare for the sabotagers. There will always be people who are
negative, who try to get you to do your old habit. Be ready for them. Confront
them, and be direct: you don’t need them to try to sabotage you, you need their
support, and if they can’t support you then you don’t want to be around them.
17. Talk to yourself. Be your own cheerleader, give yourself pep
talks, repeat your mantra (below), and don’t be afraid to seem crazy to others.
We’ll see who’s crazy when you’ve changed your habit and they’re still lazy,
unhealthy slobs!
18. Have a mantra. For quitting smoking, mine was “Not One Puff
Ever” (I didn’t make this up, but it worked — more on this below). When I
wanted to quit my day job, it was “Liberate Yourself”. This is just a way to
remind yourself of what you’re trying to do.
19. Use visualization. This is powerful. Vividly picture, in your
head, successfully changing your habit. Visualize doing your new habit after each
trigger, overcoming urges, and what it will look like when you’re done. This
seems new-agey, but it really works.
20. Have rewards. Regular ones. You might see these as bribes,
but actually they’re just positive feedback. Put these into your plan, along
with the milestones at which you’ll receive them.
21. Take it one urge at a time. Often we’re told to take it one day at a
time — which is good advice — but really it’s one urge at a time. Just make it
through this urge.
22. Not One Puff Ever (in other words, no exceptions). This
seems harsh, but it’s a necessity: when you’re trying to break the bonds
between an old habit and a trigger, and form a new bond between the trigger and
a new habit, you need to be really consistent. You can’t do it sometimes, or
there will be no new bond, or at least it will take a really really long time
to form. So, at least for the first 30 days (and preferably 60), you need to
have no exceptions. Each time a trigger happens, you need to do the new habit
and not the old one. No exceptions, or you’ll have a backslide. If you do mess
up, regroup, learn from your mistake, plan for your success, and try again (see
the last item on this list).
23. Get rest. Being tired leaves us vulnerable to relapse.
Get a lot of rest so you can have the energy to overcome urges.
24. Drink lots of water. Similar to the item above, being dehydrated
leaves us open to failure. Stay hydrated!
25. Renew your commitment often. Remind yourself of your commitment hourly,
and at the beginning and end of each day. Read your plan. Celebrate your
success. Prepare yourself for obstacles and urges.
26. Set up public
accountability. Blog about it, post
on a forum, email your commitment and daily progress to friend and family, post
a chart up at your office, write a column for your local newspaper (I did this
when I ran my first marathon). When we make it public — not just the commitment
but the progress updates — we don’t want to fail.
27. Engineer it so it’s hard to
fail. Create a groove
that’s harder to get out of than to stay in: increase positive feedback for
sticking with the habit, and increase negative feedback for not doing the
habit. Read more on this method.
28. Avoid some situations where
you normally do your old habit, at least for awhile, to make it a bit easier on yourself. If
you normally drink when you go out with friends, consider not going out for a
little while. If you normally go outside your office with co-workers to smoke,
avoid going out with them. This applies to any bad habit — whether it be eating
junk food or doing drugs, there are some situations you can avoid that are
especially difficult for someone trying to change a bad habit. Realize, though,
that when you go back to those situations, you will still get the old urges,
and when that happens you should be prepared.
29. If you fail, figure out
what went wrong, plan for it, and try again. Don’t let failure and guilt stop you. They’re just obstacles,
but they can be overcome. In fact, if you learn from each failure, they become
stepping stones to your success. Regroup. Let go of guilt. Learn. Plan. And get
back on that horse.
Your net worth to the
world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are
subtracted from your good ones. – Benjamin Franklin
Source:
http://zenhabits.net/the-habit-change-cheatsheet-29-ways-to-successfully-ingrain-a-behavior/
