Habit Busting: A 10-Step Plan That Will Change Your Life

How would you like to be your best self all the time? To be free and successful at work? To eat healthily? To give up smoking? To stop procrastinating? According to the authors of Habit-Busting it can be simple, it can be quick, and it can be fun.

In this invaluable guide Pete Cohen and Sten Cummins offer techniques to stop sabotaging yourself and straightforward strategies for bringing out your best. They will help you work with your strengths, learn from masters in whatever it is you want to accomplish and take stock of past behaviour – both what has worked for you and what hasn’t. ‘Habit-Busting’ shows how in just 21 days you can turn a bad habit into a healthy one that can last a lifetime.

Pete Cohen is an NLP-trained personal trainer and sports psychologist. He works with various sports teams, including Kent County Cricket Club. He runs his trademarked Lighten Up! Workshops throughout the UK and his work features regularly in the media.

In order to change a habit, we need to reprogramme our brains. Are you going to rely on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs for the rest of your life? Instead of smoking, overeating or biting our nails because it might help you to feel better (temporarily, you need to build new neurological patterns in the brain to tell you that another kind of behaviour say, going for a walk, lying down for 10 minutes, or doing something else that gives you pleasure will make you feel just as good, if not better. We need to repeat the new behaviour until the old way of thinking withers and is forgotten.

Are you always going to rely on your habit to control you? Will you allow cigarettes, drugs, food or stress to get the better of you for ever? Are you going to carry on giving your self a hard time? Or are you going to change?

Try this exercise:
Get a notebook and three different colour pens.
From the following list, underline in one colour the habits you want to stop.
In another colour, underline those you are happy with.
With the last colour, underline those habits you want to adopt.

As you read through the list, bear in mind that all of these habits are simply things you have learned or can learn how to do.

Cleaning your teeth Smoking
Eating fruit and vegetables Procrastinating
Nail-biting Overeating
Taking regular exercise Laughing regularly
Relaxing Taking plenty of sleep
Washing and bathing Listening to people
Getting stressed Taking drugs

Gambling Eating slowly
Getting drunk Giving yourself a hard time
Having low self-esteem Eating slowly
Spending time with friends Eating too fast
Cooking Drinking water
Wearing clean clothes Brushing your hair
Enjoying a hobby Kissing
Gardening Getting Angry

Now in your notebook make a list of the habits you ve underlined which you d like to break. For each of these answer the questions below.

Were you born with this habit?
Did you learn this habit?
Is it an adopted habit, i.e. one that you remember either your parents or friends having?
Are you good at this habit?
Is this habit good for you?
Will this habit serve you well in the future?
Do you want to change it?
Are you prepared to change?
What do you need to change?
What is it about you that will help you to change?

Many people think change is difficult. They have been conditioned to believe that. But think of all the other times in your life when you ve changed. The clothes you wear, the places you go, the things you talk about are probably vastly different now from what they were 10 years ago. You made a transition and going back to your past wardrobe, past hangouts or past conversations is unthinkable, maybe even unbearable. In many of these instances the change you made was not a struggle. The changes occurred consciously or even unconsciously, without tears, fuss or effort.