Win the Battle Against Bad Habits

“There is no way to change one isolated item of behavior if the item is significant and the
change is to be a lasting one. We have to change the pattern of which it is a part.”
— Ernst G. Beier

Winning the Battle

In this stage, the key is to replace your bad habit with a new lifestyle. Professional therapists call this stage maintenance.

Countering, the technique we studied in stage 4, is the first step in this process. Promoting new habits is crucial to your success. If you only remove the old habit, you’re condemned to a lifetime of fighting off the urge to go back.

People who get stuck in this stage would gladly go back to their old lifestyle if science were suddenly to offer new proof that their habit was harmless. If safe cigarettes were invented that somehow satisfied a smoker’s nicotine craving without causing cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, ex-smokers who never move past this stage would buy them by the truckload.

In this stage you must struggle to prevent a relapse. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I wasn’t ready to quit smoking when I reached my target date. I thought I could just quit cold turkey and break the habit by using sheer willpower. I was wrong. My mistake didn’t cause me to give up, as often happens when people discover that willpower alone isn’t enough.

I understand now that I did two things right that were keys to my success: First, I went through a real preparation stage that lasted about one month. Second, I didn’t blame myself or let myself feel guilty because I lapsed.

Research has shown that these two things are keys to breaking any bad habit. I didn’t know at the time that these techniques were scientifically sound. I simply used them as part of my trial-and error effort to quit, and common sense told me that they were the right way to attack my problem.

I had many lapses during that month. It wasn’t a relapse: I was still in the preparation stage, still strengthening my commitment to quit. There were many lapses, however. Almost every day, I ended up buying a pack of cigarettes, smoking one, and throwing the rest of the pack away out of disgust.