Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Stage Five


“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.

 Lapses as well as relapses teach you that real change costs more than you thought in terms of time, effort, and cash. My lapses taught me that I needed to make a more serious commitment to preparing for my lifestyle change. One of the most important things I did during this period was to buy new uniforms for my basketball team.

Putting your money where your mouth is always helps to keep you focused on the goal of lifestyle change. By doing this, I was starting to think more about getting in basketball shape and less about trying to quit smoking.

I came to understand another important thing after my lapses. Every time I lapsed, I felt disgusted. But I didn’t feel guilty or beat myself up for not being strong enough to stick to my word. There is a huge difference.

I felt disgusted because I was letting the bad habit control me. Every day when I threw away the almost-full pack of cigarettes, I proved to myself that I could control the habit. Instead of feeling guilty, I felt free and powerful every time I chose to throw away the nineteen cigarettes remaining in the pack I just bought. If I could choose to do that, I could choose not to buy the pack in the first place. 

Do some bad habits require a lifetime of maintenance? Even the experts are divided on this. Alcoholics Anonymous teaches its members that this stage lasts for as long as they are alive. I believe that it is possible to free yourself from bad habits forever. I believe it because I did it, and millions of other people have done it, too.   

One thing is sure: Programs that promise easy change or quick fixes fail because they ignore stage 5. Dieters who regain more weight than they lost by following the latest fad are victims of programs that ignore the need for a total lifestyle change. In the end, of course, they are victims of their own wishful thinking. They learn the hard way that lasting change cannot be made without serious effort on their part.  

People in stage 5 haven’t changed their lifestyle yet. They are still working on changing it. For some people, the struggle can indeed go on for a lifetime; others move through this stage quickly and free themselves from the problem forever.

What causes people to relapse?


Researchers have identified three main causes of relapses:

1.      Overconfidence: The ex-alcoholic who says, “I can handle one drink,” is clearly in stage 5. As everyone in AA knows, overconfidence is the No. 1 cause of relapses among its members.
2.      Daily temptation: A man who is fighting an addiction to pornography cannot walk into a movie theater that’s showing an X-rated film and ask God for the strength not to look at the screen. People in stage 4 still feel tempted. Success depends on removing daily temptations from your life. You can’t eliminate every temptation, of course. That’s why you need to master the countering techniques covered in stage 4. 
3.      Guilt and self-blame: Telling yourself that you aren’t strong enough to break the habit sets you up for a relapse. It’s part of the verbal cage that people construct to avoid responsibility for their choices.
Deep change must be associated with a new way of life. Research shows that a diet is successful when it is combined with eating healthier foods and exercising. Most of us don’t need to see research findings to believe this: We see the proof every day in our own lives and in the lives of people who are close to us.  

The first danger sign for a dieter usually isn’t overeating, but weakening her commitment to a new lifestyle. She stops going to her exercise class. When she sits in front of the TV instead of exercising, she’s only one step away from serving herself a big bowl of ice cream.

Most gyms and fitness centers have mirrored walls. When she goes to the gym again, she will be reminded of the need to keep working on a healthier lifestyle. But if she stops going to the gym altogether, the lapse can become a total relapse. 

Social pressures are still dangerous in stage 4. As far as possible, ex-smokers must stay away from environments where people smoke, and dieters must stay away from environments where people overeat. That’s why holidays are the most difficult times to start a diet. Setting a target date that coincides with the Christmas season is foolish. It makes more sense to start your diet after the New Year.

New Year’s resolutions don’t fail because they’re made on the New Year; they fail because people jump into them without having progressed through the previous stages. As I learned from my experience, you can’t move through the action stage successfully if you haven’t already moved out of the preparation stage.

Most people make New Year’s resolutions after waking up with a hangover—or with five extra pounds in their midsection—on the morning of January 1. They haven’t done the necessary preparation to have a chance to be successful. It’s no wonder that so many people go back to their old behavior before the month of January is over.    

When you relapse, learn from it and move on. This is part of the spiral that most people go through before they exit the cycle forever. You don’t have to start over when you slip up. A lot of people fall out of the cycle completely by beating themselves up with feelings of guilt after a lapse.

My experience taught me two important lessons: (1) A lapse isn’t always a relapse; and (2) Guilt and self-blame don’t help. If I had allowed myself to feel guilty when I lapsed, I probably would have dovetailed into a total relapse, and it might have taken me another five years before I was ready to make a serious commitment to quit.


It took years to establish your bad habit. If you think you can eliminate it in a few days or weeks, you’re probably setting yourself up for failure.