The following comes from Darren Hardy's outstanding book, "The Compound Effect."Your habits are learned; therefore, they can be unlearned. If you want to sail your life in a new direction, you have to first pick up the anchors of bad habits that have been weighing you down. The key is to make your why-power so strong that it overwhelms your urges for instant gratification. And for that, you need a new game plan. The following are my all-time favorite game changers:
1. Identify Your Triggers
Look at your list of bad habits. For each one you’ve written down, identify what triggers it. Figure out what I call “The Big 4’s”—the “who,” the “what,” the “where,” and the “when” underlying each bad behavior.
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2. Clean House
Get to scrubbin’. And I mean this literally and figuratively. If you want to stop drinking alcohol, remove every drop of it from your house (and your vacation house, if you have one). Get rid of the glasses, any fancy utensils or doo-dads you use when you drink, and those decorative olives, too.
3. Swap It
Look again at your list of bad habits. How can you alter them so that they’re not as harmful? Can you replace them with healthier habits or drop-kick them altogether? As in, for good.
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4. Ease In
I live near the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I get in the water, I get my ankles acclimated first, then walk in up to my knees, then it’s my waist and chest, before taking the plunge.
5. Or Jump In
Not everyone is wired the same way. Some researchers have found that it can be paradoxically easier for people to make lifestyle changes if they change a great many bad habits at once.
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