Change the Environment
Change Your Environment
Change your environment in order to help you succeed with a habit change. Make it impossible to do the thing you don’t want to do.
For the example for this post, let’s look at the habit of stopping the eating of sweets.
Anything that you have control over is where you start. Start by not buying the sweets at the grocery store or any other store. Do not bring them into your house. Do not go down the aisle in the grocery store where the sweets are.
Avoid any places where you normally purchase sweets. Don’t go near that vending machine at work, don’t even pass by it. Don’t drive by the doughnut shop on your way to work by taking a different route to work.
There may be some people that you need to avoid instead of places. This avoidance is only temporary so you won’t lose all your friends. If they are truly your friends or relatives that care about you, they will allow you your space to avoid them for a short time.
No matter where your triggers to eat sweets are, there is a way to avoid them. If you start saying that it is impossible to avoid them, you are going down the path to defeat.
Keep brainstorming and do not stop brainstorming until you come up with a plan to avoid all your irresistible trigger spots. Eventually they will cease to be trigger spots if you avoid them for a long enough period of time, but in the beginning you must be diligent about the avoidance or prevention of your bad habit.
Attacking your environment is just one small way to help you succeed with habit change. Normally many tactics need to be employed at once or over a period of time in order to fully succeed, but this will give you a good head start on your habit change efforts.