It is new year, all those resolutions going to waste!
It seemed a timely spot to suggest how we can change outcomes, as it is those we want to change, we just call them habits reflecting the action.
Let’s pick one of the most common: ‘I will stop smoking’.
The usual outcome is that we fail to stop smoking, despite wanting to, resolving, and trying often. It is expensive, and not good for us, but it is a ‘habit’ that is extremely hard to break.
I know, I successfully stopped smoking, for a day or two, at least monthly for several years. Then I stopped, successfully, no drugs, not hypnotherapy, no doctors’ orders, now almost 40 years ago, when a packet of Dunhill 20 was still well under a dollar a pack.
What I realised so long ago, was that there were triggers that set up the urge to light up. The phone ringing at work, after a meeting with my then boss, having a beer (that could happen any time) and several others. My strategy was to substitute the habit of lighting up with something else, a substitute habit that satisfied and then replaced the craving for a fag.
Once I had figured out the substitute, and ensured the new routine was in place, it was actually pretty easy after the first few days.
The challenge is to find that new routine that can replace the nasty habit, and build it to the point where it effectively substitutes for the habit you want to stop. Obviously, if you want to lose weight, stopping eating chocolate cake by substituting it for ice cream is not going to do you much good.
The reward of the new routine has to be real, and related to the cue.
Part of the reward I gave myself was semantic. Sounds silly, but it helped.
I never said I had given up smoking, which implies a cost of some sort. Instead, I told myself, and others, that I had taken up non-smoking, which implies a reward, and attracted the support of those around me for the short time it was necessary. Quickly, I became one of those boring former smokers who pontificated about how easy it had been to become a non-smoker.
It is a simple psychological process.
Identify the cue, substitute the nasty habit with a ‘reward’, create a new routine that works to the same cue.
The simple cue substitution process works, whatever ingrained behaviour you are trying to change, personally, or in a group in a commercial context.
Don’t be afraid of it, embrace it.
Good luck with that resolution!!
Thanks again to Scott Adams and Dilbert for the header cartoon
