It often takes a few weeks of experimenting to find a replacement habit. Eventually, though, you’ll find a routine that produces the same reward. When that happens, you should realign your mindset to focus on repeating this behavior instead of dwelling on the habit you’re trying to eliminate.
The best way to make a lasting change is to follow a step-by-step plan whenever you experience that impulse to revert back to old behavior. You can do this by focusing on the triggers you identified from Step #10 and creating a plan for each one. The goal here is to reprogram your mind to take a different action, even when you feel that craving.
All of this is possible with an if-then plan.
This is a concept related to the Implementation Intention experiments conducted by Peter Gollwitzer. In one experiment, Gollwitzer asked his students to mail in an assignment two days before Christmas. One group was simply given the assignment, while the other was asked to form specific if-then statements: When would they mail the assignment? Where they would mail it? How they would mail it?
The results?
The first group (no specific instructions) had a 32 percent success rate, and the second group (if-then instructions) had a 72 percent success rate. They more than doubled their success rate simply by having a plan.
If you want to successfully break a bad habit, then you need to create a series of if-then plans for those moments when you feel tempted to cave in to temptation.
Once again, let’s go back to the drinking example. Here are a few new strategies you could implement:
• “When Dave invites me to O’Brien’s, I will suggest a hike instead.”
• “On ‘Football Sunday,’ I will attend Meetup.com activities instead of hitting the bar.”
• “At 5:00 every day, I will go for a 30-minute walk to reduce stress.”
The idea here is to identify your “weak spots” and create a plan for how you’ll act. This will be your first line of defense against a bad-habit impulse. Whenever a craving strikes, you’ll know exactly what to do instead.
The point behind an if-then plan is to fully understand when you typically fail and then create a plan for what to do when that scenario pops up.
CASE STUDY
I was surprised at how often I felt compelled to check my cellphone. The trigger usually started as a random thought. When I didn’t have an if-then plan, I often found myself automatically grabbing my phone without understanding why I was doing it.
To counteract this behavior, I came up with a few if-then plans to follow whenever the urge to check my phone popped up:
“If I feel like I need to check a certain webpage, I will write down a reminder to follow up when I’m using my laptop.”
“If the urge happens while working, I will only check my phone when I’ve completed a block from the Pomodoro Technique.”
“If I absolutely have to check a webpage in the evening, I will do it on my laptop and stand up the entire time. That way, I won’t get comfortable and end up wasting 30 minutes of my time.”
As you can see, you can get pretty creative with making a plan around your triggers. The key (as we’ve discussed) is to fully understand your weaknesses and have a strategy in place for handling them.