Saturday, September 10, 2011

Simple Technique for Changing a Negative Habit

By Kathy Smith


A great method for me personally of going about changing behavior has always been to write down inside a diary what I 'm doing. This has been successful for me with both exercising and calorie restriction routines. The act of documenting what I ingested each day or the quantity of weights I raised at the gym has me answerable to myself.


Trying to keep a diary seems to provide a sense of separation between me and my activities. Personally I think that I can more rationally see what I have already been doing vs the things I think I have been undertaking. I become a separate observer of my personal actions, and the knowledge is very similar to seeing a video tape connected with myself. I can rapidly see if I am truly eating healthier meals or lifting heavier weights. It is all recorded in the journal, as it may very well be on a video tape. Journals and videos don't lie.

A typically unexpressed benefit for journaling is that it means that you can quickly look back with time and evaluate how well you're progressing. Flicking just a number of pages back, within a lot less than 5 minutes, I noticed the magnitude to which I have improved. This has been instrumental in shifting and re-shaping my own actions. When the urge to eat refined food hits, I quickly and easily turnflick through the entries of my diary and I instantly feel energized to get back in line. The fact that is down on paper or recorded so that it is visible quickly offers significance. Seeing your personal improvement instantaneously is a subtle, but very effective form of positive reinforcement.

Done over a period of several months, a diary furthermore ends up being a easy way to record the history of your progress. Recording a longer history of improvement is an excellent way to keep setbacks perspective. For example, if you were eating healthy and then go away on vacation and eat anything you like for a 7 days, a several of people feel they "ruined" weeks of working hard. But, that is merely a small snapshot from the bigger picture. They are really better eaters ultimately and are healthier vs. what they were before.

Journaling also serves as a means of breaking the old, damaging beliefs. Whenever you really feel tempted to go back to bad ways of eating or laxness, the journal can be a new cue to the preferred new behavior, cutting off the old actions before it has time for you to grow again. Composing in the journal or reading past notes are healthynew things to do while the need to deviate tempts you. Rather than eating processed food, you write in or you read your own journal. You actually replace one habit with a new behavior.

Writing is an effective tool to me in changing the behavior and I trust it will benefit you, too.




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