How do you do it? Do you have a method you fall back on? Or are you searching for one? Maybe you'll find it here :L Whether it's breaking bad ones or making good ones, I always try to give myself positive reinforcement. I keep a checklist of things to do (or not do) every day, and cross them off as I achieve them. But I also make it a higher goal to just get at least one productive thing done per day; so even if I don't finish my list for the day, I still feel accomplished and still want to write another one for tomorrow. I also recently found this site, which may help those looking for a habit-breaker/former. You keep a log of how many days in a row you do or don't do something, and each time it adds a link in the chain. After a while you start to get a high-score mentality and go for the most consecutive days.
The main habits I've dealt with head-on have been food related. The biggest was that I grew up constantly drinking soda. I would drink it with every meal (except when I got school milk with my lunches) and every time I was thirsty (which would add up to at least 4 glasses on average in a day). This went on all the way through high school and I am totally surprised I wasn't continually dealing with dehydration. But one day I decided I was not going to drink soda on a constant basis anymore so I quit cold turkey. Probably not necessarily the best method, but it was helpful to me in this case. I stopped buying soda to keep in my fridge and I never ordered it when I went out to eat. Pretty much any time I would have gotten a soda, I substituted it for water. It was tough at first, I would get headaches from lack of caffeine/sugar, but I would just tough through it. Only on occasion I would drink something that had flavor to it, like sweet tea or juice, to break the monotony of water (because I didn't want to transition from always drinking one sugary drink to the next, and I've never liked flavored water). A month or two down the road and I was totally hooked on drinking mainly water. Now I can have that occasional soda or sugary drink and walk away after one glass with no problems (I even find it difficult to finish an individual can/bottle nowadays in one sitting, which is good because they're always more than one serving anyway). I didn't get any more headaches, I felt I had more energy (was so dependent on soda back in the day that I could fall right to sleep even after chugging a couple cups of it), and I think I did a huge favor to my teeth and digestive system after that. Along with drinking soda, I have always been a big eater, too. Always snacking (especially when bored) and eating meals that were at least twice the recommended serving every time. Cutting back on food consumption is something I started around the time I stopped drinking soda and is still something I've been trying to get a handle on for years. Though I've never really dealt with weight issues, I always thought having a healthier lifestyle would be more beneficial in the long run. I started keeping like a food journal on a daily basis. I'd write down the food I ate, how many servings, and the total calories consumed each meal/snack. At first, this is all I was doing...writing stuff down, no real set goals, just observing the patterns. Surprisingly, I found that just writing down this stuff actually changed my eating habits without my having set conscious goals yet. I would eat smaller portions during meals, fewer snacks during the day, and the type of snacks would end up being healthier choices. Unfortunately, I have dropped the journaling habit and taken it back up again several times since I've started and that lack of continual self-check has really hindered my progress over the years. I know the biggest thing that would help (and I recommend to others) is having someone else hold you accountable. I've always been pretty self reliant and I never like asking others for help (because I feel like it would be a hindrance to them) and so I've yet to actually step out of my comfort zone and get outside help (probably another habit I should work on xP). But if you can find someone who is around you enough to encourage/remind you of what you should(n't) be doing, ask them for help. Even better, see if they have something they need/want to be held accountable for because it would increase the chance of you both being consistent in helping each other out since both of you would want to benefit from each other's help instead of it just turning into a one-sided nagging type deal.
I'm a primitive man child, so I had to work with a sanction system. Every time I broke my personal code, I'd donate to charity. This worked well for a time, until I realized how arbitrarily I started to apply it. I didn't feel like I deserved a "sanction" every time I made a decision I didn't completely like, which begged the question of what I should count and what was still somewhat acceptable. This proved a question too difficult to answer, so I tossed the entire system overboard. I don't have any alternative at the moment, but I don't think I quite need one. If I break a bad habit now, it's probably becaused I've been called out on it. You could argue that this is "too late", but I'd say it's better late than never. Nobody's perfect from the get-go, and as long as you're willing to turn your vices around, you should be given a chance to do so.
One bad habit I used to have was a complete lack of exercise. I literally would spend my entire life in my room and the living room. But mostly my room. I would also walk the two blocks down to my church on Sundays and Wednesdays, but aside from that, I didn't ever do anything other than sit around and be on my laptop. Surprisingly, this laziness never gave me any problems with weight, I've always been stick thin (which is weird because I eat far too much food anyway) but I actually started trying to break this habit due to insomnia. I'd posted about it here on KHV in the Help with Life section, and someone gave me a link to a site that gave advice on how to get a better night's sleep. One of the things the site said was you're more likely to sleep through the night if you exercise, and if you spend more time outdoors during the day. So I resolved to go walking as often as possible. It took a long time to get into the habit, and to build up stamina to walk longer and farther, but now I walk practically everywhere I go, and don't get tired easily when I do so. Now I'm also trying to get into the habit of building up strength and flexibility, but it's still going slow. It's all about persistence, I guess. Now that I've mentioned the success of one good habit, I feel I should talk about one I'm still struggling with, and that's time management and planning. Pretty much, for my entire life I was hardly ever made to do something I didn't want to do. While I was never wild enough to use this for rebellion or whatevs, I spent the majority of my life sitting in my room reading books. And not even books on history or other school-y type stuff, either. Fiction, and fiction only, appealed to me. So, for most of my life, I did absolutely nothing. Now I'm trying to learn to make it in this life, and I'm trying to do it all at once. But for all I'm trying to do, I still spend entire days online reading fanfic when there are so many things I need to do, or want to learn. On a good day I can do three important things and one personal thing, like practicing an instrument or writing a chapter for a story. But most days, I'll do one or two important things and then just stop, and on bad days I do nothing at all. In fact, I have so much I need to do today that I shouldn't even be online at all, and yet I tried four times to play Virtual Villagers this morning. For once, I'm thankful that my laptop is giving me problems, I really couldn't afford to start playing a game when I've got so much on my plate. But that's a testament to what I'm saying, I just have such a hard time actually doing things when I need to, and I'm still trying to figure that one out. I was going by a schedule for a few days, but I dropped that pretty fast. Now I at least have a sort of weekly thing going on. Monday's laundry day, Tuesday's "focus on finding a job" day, etc. I guess, same with exercise, it's all about persistence. I just need to make myself persist. XD
I would use classical conditioning on myself. Like last year for lent, I wanted to eat less chocolate and more fruit so every time I wanted a piece of chocolate I would eat something fruity and eventually I just wanted fruit. I didn't do it for long enough though because it didn't last long after lent. I have also been trying to use aversion therapy on myself to reduce the temptation of eating food at work. Aversion therapy is basically classical conditioning but I make myself associate the bad habit with something negative e.g. feeling sick so that, eventually, I will feel sick at the thought of eating the food. I have been trying this at work by making myself full before I leave or cleaning my teeth but I haven't been doing it for that long yet.
