How to Change Bad Habits - Part One

Part I

If good intentions were all that were needed to make our New Year's resolutions come true, then we wouldn't make the same ones year after year.

According to clinical psychologist Dr. Clayton Tucker-Ladd, author of the online book "Psychological Self-Help," research shows that strong and sincere intentions account for only 20-30 percent of the success in changing an ingrained behavior.

I can vouch for this phenomenon because I have witnessed countless people who start out with the most sincere of fitness intentions only to fail and slide back into their old lifestyle. They don't lack the desire to get fit or eat healthy but old habits are just so hard to change.

In my case, I may have overcome my eating and exercise bad habits years ago, but I have my own set of other habits like poor time management and allowing paperwork on my desk to pile up sky high that I have tried time and again to change without much success.

Why are habits so difficult to change?
No one knows the exact reason but a partial answer may be that all habits, whether good or bad, start out as an effort to accomplish something positive. This is according to Charles Burke, author of "Command More Luck."

Burke says that all bad habits originally have a good purpose. Nail biting, for example, usually begins as a way to distract yourself from feeling nervous. Overeating, he says, is a way of making you feel good and the annoying habit of chronic complaining may be someone's way of regaining little power in a life he or she has little control over.

There is no doubt that once a habit, whether a behavior, attitude or thought, becomes rooted in your life, it can be very difficult to get rid of.

That's why it's so important that we teach our children good health and fitness habits while we can still shape them. A child who is allowed to spend hours watching television while mindlessly eating chips and other snacks will grow up to be an adult who has a tough time shaking the couch potato habit.

Bad habits eventually affect us negatively
Although our bad habits may originally have been beneficial to us in a left-handed sort of way, sooner or later they cause stress, tension and anxiety.

The bad habit of procrastination will temporarily bring relief from not having to do a difficult project but will eventually become a source of tension for having to work overtime to beat your deadline. Then it becomes a source of regret for having passed in mediocre work done in a hurry.

If you are like me and you have a couple of bad habits you want to change once and for all this 2003, then Ladd's book can give us a fighting chance because he offers practical step-by-step advice based on sound scientific psychological techniques for changing behavior as well as other deeper issues like how to deal with painful emotions.

If you want to know more about his methods, go to www.mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/ and browse through this interesting on-line manual.

Ladd offers far too many methods to be discussed in this article so I will focus on only four of them. The four techniques are changing your environment to change your behavior, substituting a good habit for a bad one, self-monitoring your progress, and rewarding a new habit.

To get off to a good start, you have to first identify specifically what behavior you want to change. It can be something like you want to eat more fruits and vegetables at every meal or you want to stop eating snacks after dinner while watching TV.

The more specific you are, the more successful you will be. It's not enough to say, "I will stop being so messy." It is much better to specifically state which area of your house or office you want to clean up like your closet, desk, or bedroom.

Next, don't try to change all your bad habits at once. That will be a recipe for failure since it is hard enough to change one habit permanently.

Choose one or two bad habits that are really causing you grief in terms of health, fitness, relationships, work or school grades. Focus on your target bad habit and get it under control before moving on to the next. Jan. 1 is not the only time to make a resolution. You can do it any time of the year.

Lastly, you have to believe that you can change. Ladd says that all habits, whether good or bad, are learned and therefore, can be unlearned and changed.

It doesn't matter how old you are or how old the habit is. If you have the desire, determination, practical skills and knowledge, and the belief that it is possible to change, you can do it.

Of course, he is talking about common bad habits like being late for appointments or smoking. This does not apply to habits of people with psychological disorders like obsessive compulsion or paranoia.

Changing your environment
Ladd says this is one of the most powerful and practical methods to change your behavior since it is simple, safe, effective, and quick. There are two goals you want to achieve by changing your environment: Avoid situations that lead to the unwanted habit and provide an environment that encourages your new good habit.

Step 1: Recognize a "bad" environment.

Ladd says this first step can be easy or hard. It's easy to figure out why you snack after dinner if you keep a refrigerator in your room filled with chocolates and the like. Remove the refrigerator and you won't snack. Or fill the fridge with fruits and you will still snack but it won't be a bad habit anymore.

For habits like smoking or nail biting, it may be a little harder since these habits tend to become unconscious responses to situations around you. But if you can spot what causes you to pull out a cigarette or bite your nails, you will be able to do something.

Other examples of bad environments are friends who encourage you to drink too much, studying with the TV on in front of you, not preparing your clothes the night before so you are rushing around the next morning making you late for school or work, not keeping your medication in a prominent place so you always forget to take them, etc.

Step 2: Avoid situations that lead to unwanted actions. Provide warning signs. Break the chain early.

Ladd says that we can avoid a bad environment completely or we can change parts of it. If there is no quiet place to study at home, change the scenery completely and do all your homework in the school library before going home.

If you and your parents always get into an argument, don't change your parents (as if you can). Instead, make a deal with them to avoid the topics that make all of you lose your temper.

Carefully placed warning signs can help you change your behavior. If you watch too much TV, set your cell phone or alarm clock to ring after one hour to remind you to do other things. If you want to cut down on smoking, use only one ashtray and keep all the cigarette butts so you have a visual warning to slow down for that day.

Ladd points out that all habits are the result of a step-by-step chain of events that lead up to the behavior.

If you break the chain early, you can avoid the unwanted behavior. You can't gorge on ice cream at home unless the ice cream is first bought at the grocery and then brought home to be stored in the freezer.

If you commit to eating an ice cream cone at the mall instead of buying a gallon to be brought home, you won't make a pig of yourself later.

Step 3: Provide cues or environments that encourage the good habit.

Ladd puts it very simply: "Put yourself in the right place at the right time." If you go straight to the gym before going home from work, you will become a regular exerciser. If you go home first and see your comfortable sofa in front of the TV, you will battle with your willpower and end up losing.

Use signs to remind you to do the right thing. The most effective signs are those that are placed where you can't overlook them and those that are worked into your daily schedule.

For example, place a dot of red nail polish in the upper corner of your cell phone to remind you to stand up straight and pull your abdomen in. Use the commercial breaks on TV to remind you to do some simple exercises in your bedroom.

Step 4: Use your mind to encourage you to change your behavior.

Ladd writes that advanced thinking and/or planning of the new behavior you want to have helps you to be successful.

If your bad habit is always criticizing your spouse, before you go to sleep every night, reinforce your desire to change by saying to yourself, "I will say at least one kind and encouraging thing to my wife tomorrow."

According to Ladd, research shows that planning in advance how you are going to implement a hard-to-start project will more than double your chances of getting going. Planning means thinking about specific ways to start with a specific time and place in mind.

Step 5: Practice, practice, practice.

All of Ladd's advice will be useless if you don't put it into practice. He says it only takes a few minutes to prepare a sign, a warning device, or to plan your daily schedule to avoid bad situations and place yourself in the right one.

But the biggest reason people don't succeed with this method (changing your environment), even if it is extremely effective, is that "most unwanted behavior occurs because we, in part, want it to occur and put ourselves in situations where it is hard to avoid."

Thus, he says, you have the paradoxical situation where the person who wants to lose weight keeps his kitchen closets stocked full of junk food and the person who wants to quit smoking keeps a pack of cigarettes in her bag and a couple of reams in her bedroom drawer.

Sigh. No wonder we human beings have such a hard time changing our habits.

Ladd also says if you put into practice anything new you learn within one or two days of hearing about it, you will be more successful. So if you want to use this method to help you change a bad habit, put it into practice today or tomorrow!

Continue reading here: Why You Should Avoid Very High Protein Diets

Was this article helpful?

0 0