Things You'll Need:
- Journal
- Notebooks
- Pencils Or Pens
- Notebooks
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Step 1
Decide how serious you are about breaking the habit. In addition to a strong commitment, you'll need time and energy to pay attention to your behavior so that you can change it.
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Step 2
Keep track of when you do the behavior. Keep a notepad or journal handy.
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Step 3
Write down when it happens (what is the situation) and what you were thinking and feeling. Writing increases your awareness of when and why you have this habit.
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Step 4
Read and think about what you write down. What does this habit do for you? Is it a way to deal with feelings of boredom, anxiety, stress, anger?
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Step 5
Think of what you could do instead of the habit that would be a more positive way to deal with the feelings or situation. Write down some simple alternative behaviors that you could do instead. Pick one you want to practice.
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Step 6
Try to catch yourself when you find yourself doing the habit and stop yourself as soon as you can. Start the alternative behavior you decided you wanted to do instead.
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Step 7
Aim to do this once a week and increase the number of times per week over time. The more you practice a new behavior, the more it becomes the new habit.
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Step 8
Get support from others by letting them know you are working on the habit and telling them what they can do to help.
Comments
korinanick said
on 4/11/2009 try to do something else opposite
jc22 said
on 8/20/2007 Great tips. I've put a link to this article from the Help section on Hidden Habits - http://www.hiddenhabits.com/ It's a site where you can admit to your habits and connect with others who do the same.
Apelila said
on 8/14/2007 Bad Habits are hard to change, cause they've been a part of us for quite sometimes. Stopping them is like giving up who you are (in your subconscious).
You will have a better chance of stopping any bad habit by having a personal coaching. You can get one of those self-help audio program for a few $$
However, you must have a "desire" to stop bad habits and work with the program consistently for a period of time, usually 3 weeks.
You can try checking out Lee Milteer's program that helped many to stop their bad habits. Check it out at www.Stop-Bad-Habits.com
reddevil said
on 2/14/2007 Hi.
I have a very bad habit. I sometimes pick my toenails and check them to see if they're ok. I know it sounds stupid but this is now happening constantly, not so much the picking anymore but the checking and re- checking.
I want to quit and keep saying I am going to but I can't. No matter what I'm doing, what I'm wearing, shoes socks slippers the urge just comesto me and then I give in after trying so patiently ot to.
It's enough now!!!
Anonymous said
on 8/8/2006 I stopped. First, feeling guilty seems to weaken your resolve. It is a negative emotion. Many people attempt to stop addictions 3 times before they really stop. This was the magic number for me, too.
Second, there is a theory of a 'set-point'. It goes like this: if you have an addiction you become used to the intake of a certain quantity of that substance. This is your 'set-point'. If you try to break an addiction by tapering off or taking patches, or have any exposure to that substance, your body will automatically try to push you to the old level of addiction(your set point). So patches and tapering off actually make it harder to break an addiction, and also weaken your will by making you feel guilty that you are not strong enough to do it.
You are strong enough. In reality, living will always taste better than the results of addiction, and you know this.
I quit smoking the third time by facing reality. I knew I probably would gain weight regardless of the stuff that the quit smoking do-gooders were putting out. I bought everything I needed to survive for several days so I would not go the market and be exposed to cigarettes on the shelf. I buried my car keys because I needed my car to go shopping and I thought in the long dirty process of digging them up, if I were weakened, I might feel ridiculous and come to my senses. I turned off the phone because when I stopped smoking prior to this I became nasty and mean and I also slept a great deal. I would speak to no one at this time and told friends not to call. For 3 days (I did this on a 3 day weekend) I just hibernated. When I felt like a cigarette I had water(which helps flush impurities out of the body) and mints and gum. Your body faces the worst in these first few days, so put yourself in isolation so you won't have to feel guilty about being unreasonable to your friends. After this period, much of the battle is psychological.
During that period and in the subsequent weeks/months whenever I felt like a cigarette I used the AA trick. Really believing in myself, I said 'I will have one in the next hour, but just not now at this moment'. I looked at the clock and believed that I would have one in the next hour. When the urge came again, I did the same thing.
If you can believe it when you say it, this really works! You will think after the first week or so that your urges are just as strong as ever, but keep doing it. After a time you will notice that the time between the urges gets longer and longer, and the day will come in which an entire day passes and you cannot remember wanting that cigarette at all.
From my own experience, when you want no cigarettes at all, you are in the greatest psychological danger period because the time will come when you will say to yourself 'I cannot remember when the last time was when I wanted a cigarette I will ask my friend for a drag or an entire cigarette'. Don't do it. You will quickly go back to your old set point. The price for ever having an addiction is that you will never have 'just one'.
You have spent too much effort in breaking the habit to just blow it away on a whim.