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It just happened. I went to the dentist. After I got back home, it occurred to me that I had *driven* to the dentist, but *walked* home. I completely forgot my car!! I ran all the way back but I was too late. I got a $40 parking ticket for overstaying my welcome in the 1-hour parking zone.
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Hi Allan, how did your move go?
I don’t know if you are anything like me, but I tend to be a bit rough on myself. When I try to change a behaviour and fail, I get pretty discouraged and down on myself. The older I got the worse this problem became. So I was less likely to try again after a slip or setback, and more likely to take a position along the lines of ‘well, this is just who I am and I am stuck being like this so screw it.’ To start over again would be a whole lot of effort and hope wasted, right? I mean, how many times can you put yourself through that kind of disappointment?
So, anyway, it helped me a lot when I started to look at failure differently. I’m a science-brain, so I put more stock in evidence-based approaches. So I did a bit of research and found a resource that gave me new perspective. It is an old resource that has been around since the ’70s, but it is good. It’s called Stages of Change.
It identifies all the stages people go through when they change a behaviour (for example, you sound like you are in the “contemplation” stage right now). But I think the best thing about this model is the way it identifies the “relapse” stage.
It turns out that the more you fail at a behaviour change, the more likely you are to succeed in changing it. (BTW, this applies big-time to smoking.) People who *successfully* quit smoking for good have almost always tried to quit in the past and “failed”. But what they were really doing wasn’t failing so much as learning. Thing is, once you *see* it as learning and *apply* what you learned, that is when the real progress happens and it stops being failure and becomes real change.
This sounds unconvincing in writing, but when you put the idea into practice it really starts to make sense.
If you google it, you’ll find tons of websites. But the best ones are the ones that recognize relapse as important to success.
Also, I love these guys in these videos who quit smoking: http://www.youtube.com/user/smoberup/videos?view=0
I especially love Shelley ( the first episodes; I think they were numbered 1-
And on another note, although I have never smoked myself (I have quite enough bad habits already, thank you), I had a bunch of family and friends who all but one have successfully quit! Most of them used Champix and their doctor.
Anyhow, I hope something in all this rambling is of help!
REPORT ABUSEOh, shutterbug, I hear you (even if your coworkers don’t)! I attribute this behaviour to the power dynamics of the workplace. My solution was to rid my life of the workplace! My cats make great coworkers.
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I like that, Allan! I need to find a good resource for legal revenge strategies …
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Yup, every medical condition costs money. But it’s a lot easier to accept paying for bad eyesight or medication than to accept the cost of the paid-for purchases that I mistakenly left at the store last week.
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