Stage Three

Stage 3

“Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you.”

— Proverbs 4:25

Planning Your Personal D-Day      

We live in a world that is accustomed to 30-second commercials that offer instant solutions. But we shouldn’t be surprised when the easy solutions don’t work: There are no magic bullets, no simple solutions on the path to deep and lasting change.

In this stage, you work on making change your No. 1 priority. You can’t move into stage 4 until freeing yourself from the habit becomes your highest priority. Your life will go in the direction of your most dominant thoughts. When you focus on the past, your thoughts hold you back by causing you to relive events over and over.

Blaming ourselves for things that went wrong in the past is the most self-destructive habit of all. It’s easy for our families and friends to see when a habit like drinking, overeating, or overspending is destroying our lives. But it isn’t always so easy, not even for the people closest to us, to know when guilt and self-blame are destroying our possibility for happiness.

The solution is to accept responsibility for yourself, to realize that you can decide to take charge of your life. There is a scene in Disney’s animated film, The Lion King, which illustrates this in a humorous and powerful way. Simba has been hiding the truth from himself ever since he ran away from Pride Rock. He has constructed all sorts of verbal cages for himself: Hakuna Matata, he says, No worries.

But he isn’t happy, and he worries all the time. He blames himself for his father’s death. Simba is destined to be king of the Pride Lands, but guilt and self-blame keep him from taking action. Rafiki, the wise, old monkey and high priest of Simba’s future kingdom, tracks Simba down and tries to bring him to his senses. To bring home the message, Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his staff.

“Why did you do that?” asks Simba, rubbing the sore spot on the top of his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” answers Rafiki, “It’s in the past.”   

Simba needed to be jolted into action, and Rafiki’s staff proved to be an effective tool. Of course, if you’re in a helping relationship with a person who is trapped in a cage of guilt and self-blame, you must never hit him on the head with your staff. That technique works wonders in cartoons, but it will destroy a helping relationship in real life.

So how do you jolt a person into action if he’s stuck in the same bad habits that threatened to ruin Simba’s life?

Here’s an idea: Make popcorn, get comfortable, and invite him to watch The Lion King with you. If the person is in stage 1 or stage 2, the movie will hit him on the head for sure. It may even jolt him into action and accelerate the cycle of self-change.   

As soon as you’ve decided to change, it’s time to schedule your Decision Day. Set a date and announce your intention to take action: “I will stop smoking on the first of the month.” Put your commitment in writing.

One of the keys to successful self-change is to develop your own plan. The critical element in any program is the confidence of the person who is using it. If you believe the program will work, you have a better chance of making it work. The best way to do that is to create your own plan.

Preparing for a total lifestyle change

The key to success in this stage is reevaluating your life. The greatest motivator is a vision of what your life will be like when you break your bad habit.

Being prepared for change means that you set goals for yourself. The best way to do this is to write a personal mission statement. Make a list of the benefits of changing. How does each of these benefits help you achieve your goals in life? 

The key to freeing yourself from bad habits is to change your lifestyle. A total lifestyle change isn’t something that happens overnight. It happens one day at a time, as soon as you begin to focus on the solution instead of the problem. The process of total lifestyle change starts when you begin to think more about the present than the past.

Don’t be surprised if you’re not completely sure that you’re ready to break your habit at this stage. It’s not about quitting cold turkey; no one is asking you to do it today. Forcing yourself to quit before you’re mentally and emotionally prepared to change usually backfires. Quitting cold turkey usually doesn’t work at this stage. In this stage, you’re getting ready to quit.

The best way to free yourself from any bad habit is to replace your old behavior with a more active lifestyle. Your commitment to an exercise program is one of the keys to breaking a bad habit.

I started smoking when I was 22 years old. I had never taken a single puff on a cigarette before then. When my smoking turned into a two-pack-a-day habit, I started to worry about my health.

Like many smokers, I spent five years smoking and another five years trying to quit. I switched to a pipe for a while in the hope that the trouble it takes to prepare a pipe and clean it would curb my smoking, but it didn’t slow me down enough to make a difference. Eventually I went back to smoking cigarettes.

I realized that I was going to need a plan. I had noticed that many ex-smokers substituted snacking on junk food for their former cigarette habit. Their rapid weight gain made me wonder if the remedy wasn’t worse than the disease. I didn’t want to fall into the same trap, so I planned to use sugarless gum to satisfy my craving to put something in my mouth.

I was teaching at the time, and back then I was still using a chalkboard in the classroom. When I was trying to quit smoking, I would sometimes catch myself holding a stick of chalk between my fingers as if it were a cigarette. I almost put a stick of chalk in my mouth once. I’m sure it looked funny to the students, but I didn’t worry about it. They knew I was trying to quit, and their encouragement and support played an important role in my success.

My plan to free myself from nicotine included an exercise program. I theorized that if I punished my body enough, it would cry out for me to take better care of it. Some of my students had a basketball team in a local league. I was 33 at the time, so they were 10 to 15 years younger than I was. I told them that I wanted to start playing again, and they invited me to a practice game.

I had been a decent basketball player in my teens, but I hadn’t played competitive sports for a long time. I played about 10 minutes the first time, and when it was over, I told myself that I didn’t need to punish my body that much. But the kids wouldn’t let me quit.

I didn’t stick to the date I set for breaking my habit. It took about a month of lapses after my target date had come and gone before I quit for good. During that month, I would steal a smoke from time to time—never more than one cigarette in a day. I didn’t know it then, but I was still in stage 2 when I set my target date. I was aware of the damage that smoking was doing to my body and to my relationships, but I hadn’t made a serious commitment to change.

My lapses taught me that breaking the habit was going to cost more than I thought. I started my real preparation one day after my target date, the first time I lapsed. The month-long period of lapses after my target date became my stage 3—the preparation period that allowed me to be successful. That’s not the best way to do it, but it worked.   

The most important part of my preparation was my commitment to a more active lifestyle. My new teammates wouldn’t let me quit. I played on their team for two years. I paid for new uniforms and warm-up suits before one important statewide tournament.

I didn’t realize it then, but I understand now that the new uniforms were a motivator and a reward—my motivation to stay committed to a healthier lifestyle, and my teammates’ reward for supporting me.           

  

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the father of the aerobics movement, has said that maximum health benefits are obtained by participating in any activity that increases your heart rate for at least 30 minutes, three times a week.

Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise is enough to release endorphins into the brain. Endorphins are chemical substances produced by the body that are many times more powerful than morphine. Endorphins are responsible for the sensation of peace, well-being, and exhilaration commonly experienced by people who exercise regularly.

If you make a commitment to exercise for just 90 minutes a week, it will make you happier and it will help you replace your self-destructive habits with healthy new habits.

It doesn’t have to be competitive basketball. Brisk walking, swimming, or an exercise class will do the trick. Every lasting change costs something in terms of time, energy, and money. But if you stick with it, the payoff is a thousand to one.

You can’t exercise away all the temptations to go back to your old habit, of course. You need a plan that works 24/7. The best alternative for self-destructive habits is active diversion. Keeping busy—keeping your mind off the temptation to drink, smoke, or overeat—is the strategy that all successful self-changers use. Exercise is the healthiest substitute for bad habits, but it’s not the only substitute that works.

You are the only person who can know what will work for you. Whatever keeps you busy and takes your mind off your craving for a drink, a piece of cake, or a shopping spree will work for you. It has to be something you enjoy. Playing your favorite game, reading a book, listening to music, cleaning the house, or working on a home improvement project are all healthy alternatives.

Beware of procrastination

The biggest danger in this stage is procrastination. Try these strategies at the first sign that you’re trying to put off your commitment:

·       Weigh the benefits of acting versus the effects of procrastinating.

·       Set achievable goals. Trying to pay off your credit card next month will only set you up for failure. Paying off the credit card in six months or one year gives you a much greater expectation of success.

·       Get started. Do something. Sign up for an exercise class or go for a ride on your bike. Activity is the best antidote for procrastination.  

·       Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not perfect all the time. It’s not about perfection—it’s about making progress one step at a time.  

Knowing yourself is the key to successful planning. What are the real reasons for your habit? What are the real causes of your procrastination? Your greatest enemy at this stage is fear of failure. That’s normal. Don’t let it bother you. Just set a date and stick to it.

Be sure to set a date that’s in the near future—two weeks from today, not two months from today. If you give yourself too much time, you’ll be more likely to procrastinate. 

Stage Two

Stage 2

“We are not helpless dolls…we do not behave as we behave by accident.”

— Ernst G. Beier

Awareness—When You Know You Have a Problem

People in this stage know they have a problem and want to understand their problem, but they don’t know what to do or they feel powerless to change. People in stage 2 are still far from making a commitment to change.

Many people get stuck in this stage. They spend years telling themselves that they are going to change “one day.”

Fear of failure keeps many people stuck in this stage. They hide from the truth by telling themselves that they’re waiting for the “perfect” weight-loss program, the perfect smoking-cessation program, or the perfect time to stop drinking.  

“I’ll change when the time is right,” is one of the phrases you hear most often from people in this stage of the self-change cycle. There will never be a “right time,” of course, but they haven’t been able to break out of their verbal cage.

Some people in this stage are never able to make a serious commitment to change, even though their life depends on it. We are all familiar with the day-to-day experiences and struggles of ordinary people who are stuck in this stage.

My father-in-law recently died after a long struggle with emphysema. Even though he slept with an oxygen tank next to his bed, he never quit smoking. He cut down, but he never quit, even though he knew it was killing him.

A number of years ago, I read about a woman in New Jersey who had a tracheotomy before she died of cancer. After her tracheotomy, she was no longer able to breathe through her mouth, so she placed lighted cigarettes into the hole in her throat and inhaled the smoke that way.

Danger signs

People in stage 2 are still focusing on the problem. They want to talk about themselves and their families; they can be quite open when talking about their problem. What holds people back in this stage is often a fear of change.

Even good change threatens our security. When we’re accustomed to something, the thought of losing it can cause us to panic and freeze where we are, no matter how much we stand to gain by changing.  

Olga is a widow with three children in their teens and early twenties. She met a man named Chuck and fell head over heels in love. Chuck is divorced and recently moved to Olga’s city from another part of the country. He is a construction worker in his late forties who seems to have no trouble finding jobs in spite of a drinking problem.

A few months after I met them, Olga and Chuck left town. When Olga’s children realized that their mother was going out with an alcoholic drifter, they naturally became alarmed and pleaded with their mother to break off the relationship.

When Olga refused to stop seeing Chuck, her children told relatives that they feared their mother was in a dangerous relationship. When the whole family confronted Olga, she did what any experienced counselor could have easily predicted: She left town with her car, her clothes, and her new boyfriend.   

I was taking my walk around the neighborhood one evening when Olga stopped her car and asked if she could talk to me. What followed was a sad but common story of a woman in love with the wrong man.

When Olga and Chuck got back in town, Olga used her contacts to get Chuck a good job. Chuck moved into an apartment that Olga owns. The apartment is adjacent to the house where Olga lives with her children. Olga told me that Chuck pays rent, and he is nice to the children.

But Chuck has become verbally abusive to Olga. He hasn’t abused her physically, but the verbal abuse has become intolerable. Olga is a Hispanic American. She was born in the United States. When Chuck is drinking, he shouts at Olga and tells her to go back to Mexico. Every time Chuck insults her, Olga asks him why he doesn’t go back to wherever he is from.

Olga is a classic example of a person in stage 2. She has become aware of the problem. Olga’s “bad habit” is her low self-esteem, which is the only thing that keeps her from ending such an abusive relationship. Just as every bad habit can be broken, low self-esteem can be changed into a healthy self-image. But it takes time.

Olga realizes that her children’s safety may be at risk. Chuck has never done anything violent so far, but Olga is beginning to understand that she’s playing with fire. As bad as the relationship is, Olga doesn’t want to lose Chuck. “I love him,” she says, “Can’t he see how much he’s hurting me?”

Olga recognizes that her life may be in danger. Chuck has said that he would like to take her to another part of the country. Olga senses that moving to an area of the country where she doesn’t have any support relationships would make her even more vulnerable than she is now. “He might take me there and then decide to kill me,” she said.

Chuck hasn’t threatened Olga or the children, and Olga doesn’t want to ask Chuck to leave. She still can’t take action, which is a common problem for people in stage 2. Instead of telling Chuck to leave, she asks him why he doesn’t leave on his own. That’s as far as she can go at this point.  

Getting unstuck

Olga is afraid to lose the life she has become used to, no matter how unsatisfying or risky it is. She worries about her problem day and night, but so far that is all she has done.

One of the biggest dangers in this stage is to substitute worrying about a problem for working on it. That describes Olga. If you’re in a position to help someone who’s in stage 2 of the cycle, always keep the following points in mind:

·       People in this stage need support, listening, and feedback.

·       Don’t give advice unless you’re asked for it.

·       People in this stage usually need to be jolted into action, but that doesn’t mean you’re the one who should apply the pressure.

Trying to push a person to take action before she is ready to change can be a big mistake. Pressure at this point will only make the person more resistant to change. People who are stuck in stage 2 really do know better, but they have forgotten what they know. Too often, a personal tragedy must happen before a person in this stage is able to move forward.

Olga knows what she must do. Yet she still can’t do it, even though her family’s welfare depends on her ability to act. This is typical of people in stage 2 of the cycle. Olga didn’t come to me for advice. She already knows all the reasons to end the relationship that she needs to know, and she is beginning to understand that as long as she does nothing, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Olga is like a chain smoker who isn’t ready to quit. Many smokers are fully aware of the damage they’re doing to their health. John repeatedly says that he wants to quit, but can’t. The truth is that John doesn’t want to quit smoking.

John knows the health risks that smokers face. But he doesn’t want to give up all the little satisfactions that smoking gives him: the pleasant anticipation he experiences after a meal when he is about to light a cigarette; the satisfaction of feeling the cigarette between his fingers; the nicotine rush that goes straight to his brain every time he takes a puff; the security of knowing he has an extra carton of his favorite brand stashed away in the closet.

The only part of smoking that John wants to give up is the part that threatens to give him lung cancer; he wishes he could somehow eliminate that part, and hang onto all the other little perks that hooked him in the first place. People like John don’t want to quit, no matter how much they say they do.

John isn’t lying when he says he wants to quit. He sincerely thinks he wants to quit. His problem is that he hasn’t come to grips with the real reason he smokes. As soon as he is able to do so, he will be in a position to move forward. When he is able to admit that he likes lots of little things about his habit, he will be in a position to substitute healthy new habits for the old destructive ones.   

As long as he hides from the truth—from the real reasons why he smokes—he can conveniently shift responsibility from himself to a “force” that’s stronger than he is. When a smoker says, “I really want to quit, but I just can’t,” what he really means is that he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his bad choices.

For many people, there is a certain comfort in believing that they can’t avoid the destructive path they’re following, even though they know where it leads in the end. They are locked into a self-defeating mindset that says, “I know I’m doomed, but what can I do about it?” The answer is that they can do a great deal about it, but not until they are able to see through the mind games they play.

Why do we play these games, even when we know our habits are destroying us? I think the answer goes something like this: As soon as we break out of the cage we’ve been hiding in, we will have to admit that we had the power to do it all along.

That can be a scary thing. A person who frees himself from a habit that has dominated his life for years or decades can be terrified of the prospect of having to admit that he wasted a large part of his life by failing to take responsibility for his own behavior.

If you’re in a helping relationship with a person like that, or if you are courageous enough to admit that you are that person, take heart and remember this: Better to have wasted part of your life than to have wasted all of it. It’s never too late to turn your life around. As soon as you do, you’ll discover that none of it was wasted after all—it just took a little longer to reach your goal.  

A woman you know may be drinking herself to death, but subconsciously she tells herself that it would be far worse to be free of her habit. If she were free, she would have to spend the rest of her life wondering what she might have made of her life if she had realized sooner that she was free to make better choices.

This is the danger of focusing on the past. When all you can see is what lies behind, you aren’t able to understand that new opportunities present themselves as soon as you make the decision to walk in a different direction.

A person’s capacity to shift her thoughts from the past to the present is the key to moving from stage 2 to stage 3. You can’t make the decision to change as long as you’re still focused on the past.     

As soon as you decide to change, you’re at the end of stage 2. The next step in the cycle of freeing yourself from a bad habit is the preparation stage. 

Stage One

Stage 1

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

— G.K. Chesterton

Removing the Blinders

At the age of 72, Jim is a chronic complainer. I learned a long time ago that I don’t need to buy a newspaper or watch television to know what’s wrong with the world; there are plenty of people like Jim who will tell me what’s wrong. Complaining, gossiping, criticizing, and negative thinking are some of the deadliest habits.

Little by little, negativity eats away at a person’s health and eliminates the possibility for happiness. If someone close to you is a complainer, a criticizer, or a negative thinker, your own well-being is at risk.  

Complaining about things beyond our direct control is one of the most destructive habits. Yes, I know, it’s also one of the most common things that people do. We complain about the weather; we talk about whoever is the focus of the latest celebrity scandal; we blame the government—any government—for everything that’s wrong.

Complaining about things we can’t control is a very effective way to avoid facing up to things that we can do something about. By spending his life complaining about things that he is powerless to change, Jim avoids having to confront his own negative thinking and bitterness.

Jim wants everyone else to change. He blames everyone else for his problems: his parents, a former business partner, the government, the local economy. In his present state, he can’t begin to understand that his unhappiness has nothing to do with any of these things, and everything to do with his habit of blaming others for what’s wrong in his life.   

Jim doesn’t have a habit that causes a clear health risk. He doesn’t smoke, drink, use drugs, or overeat. But his health is failing, and he is worried about the need for major surgery. Although negative thinking hasn’t been conclusively linked to cancer or heart disease, researchers are beginning to find evidence that resentment, bitterness, and hatred literally kill people.

Jim feels no reason to change his own attitude or behavior. He is a classic example of a person who is unable to recognize the true cause of his unhappiness. Jim is in denial.

Denial is the first stage in the cycle of self-change. The vast majority of people whose health, happiness, or relationships are being threatened by a self-destructive habit spend months, if not years, in a stage where they deny the seriousness of the problem.   

People in this stage share the following characteristics:

·       They refuse to admit that they have a serious problem.

·       They resist change and usually become aggressive if confronted about the need to change.

·       They have a general sense of hopelessness, no matter how busy their lives seem to be on the surface.

Many people who have self-destructive habits also suffer from feelings of distress. Research suggests that up to 50% of drug users have some form of depression. Misery loves company: We tend to form relationships with people who have our bad habit.

By spending time in a bar, people can convince themselves that it’s the normal way to unwind after a stressful day, since there are so many other people in the bar doing the same thing. Research shows that clinically obese people are less likely to lose weight when they live with other clinically obese people.

Self-destructive behavior

Many people are so stubborn in their unconscious need to defend their bad habits that they refuse help even when their lives depend on it.  

In Changing For Good, James Prochaska mentions a startling experiment done by a zoologist named Calhoun. Instead of using domesticated white mice and rats in his research, Calhoun studied wild mice to gain an insight into how they strive to maintain control over their own behavior.

In one experiment, Calhoun gave the mice an electric switch that allowed them to select dim light, bright light, or no light in their cages. When allowed to make their own choice, the mice avoided bright lights and darkness; time after time, they turned on the dim light. But when the dim light was turned on by the experimenter, the mice ran to the switch and turned it off. Then they turned on the bright light or left the cage dark.

In another experiment, the mice were given control of a switch that activated a treadmill, which was their only source of exercise. Caged mice need to run about eight hours a day to stay healthy. Without any prompting, the mice turned on the treadmill and ran at different times of the day.

Whenever the experimenter turned on the treadmill, the mice immediately turned it off, even though the first part of the experiment clearly showed that the mice wanted and needed to exercise.

Prochaska calls this “foolish freedom.” Laboratory mice are too domesticated to exhibit this kind of behavior. Prochaska points out that the wild mice “demanded control over their behavior, even if it meant sacrificing their own health.”

Helping relationships

People in denial have lost control of the problem, which means that they have lost control of their lives. They rarely progress to the next stage without the benefit of a helping relationship.

Professional counselors, therapists, and helpers have learned that confrontation doesn’t help a person move from stage 1 to stage 2. Nagging doesn’t help. Letting him have his way—or “going along with him” to avoid confrontation—merely strengthens his denial of the problem by reinforcing in his own mind that whatever he’s doing is right.

People usually need an unexpected response before they can remove the blinders. This is a fact that hasn’t changed in the last 3,000 years, as the following story illustrates.

King David was one of the heroes of ancient Israel. He was the leader of his nation, a great warrior, an accomplished musician, and one of the greatest poets of antiquity. When he was a young shepherd tending his father’s flock, he killed a bear and a lion with his hands. When he was barely a teenager, he killed Goliath on the battlefield.

One evening, the king got out of bed and went up to the roof of his house. He saw a beautiful woman washing herself not far away. Immediately he sent his men to find out who she was. Her name was Bathsheba. She was the wife of a soldier named Uriah, who was one of Israel’s bravest and most loyal soldiers.

Uriah was away from home, serving his nation in a war against one of Israel’s many enemies. David sent for Bathsheba and slept with her. She became pregnant.

The king wanted Uriah out of the way. The Israeli army was besieging an enemy city at the time. David sent a letter to the commander of his army, Joab, in which he laid out instructions for getting rid of Uriah. He told Joab to send Uriah to the front of the battle, then retreat with the rest of his soldiers, leaving Uriah alone.

Joab carried out the king’s orders and Uriah was killed in battle. David made Bathsheba his wife, and she gave him a son.

There are a lot of things going on here that are worse than smoking, overspending, negative thinking, and overeating—treachery and murder, to name just two. And it started with David’s voyeurism, a nasty thing in itself. How do you tell a king that he’s developing some dangerous habits?

If you think it’s hard to get somebody in your own family to remove the blinders, imagine what the prophet Nathan was up against. Nathan knew what was going on. As a prophet, it was his job to help the king open his eyes.

Nathan didn’t confront David directly. Instead, he told the king a story about two men who lived in the same city. One man was rich, the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds. The only thing the poor man had was one lamb. The poor man loved the lamb as if it were his daughter.

One evening the rich man needed a lamb for a dinner party. Instead of sacrificing a lamb from one of his own flocks, he took the poor man’s lamb. When King David heard this, he was furious—he thought Nathan was telling him a true story about two men in his kingdom.

“The man who did this thing shall surely die,” said the king.

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man.”

David listened to Nathan’s story, and it opened his eyes. Why can’t we listen better? Why can’t we see the faults in ourselves that others see so clearly in us? It is so easy to know when others are in denial, and virtually impossible to admit that we are in this stage.  

In the language of modern therapy, the prophet Nathan was in a helping relationship with King David. He confronted David, but not through an act of direct verbal aggression. He created uncertainty in David by responding in a way that David least expected. That is what allowed David to open his eyes.

Uncertainty is what causes us to look for new options. Nathan knew that it’s impossible to change another person, but you can motivate him to want to change himself. Your role as a helper is to support another person during the process of self-change, not to attack him or reject him.

We can’t all be as wise as Nathan. But there is always a way to help someone open his eyes without entering into an aggressive confrontation, which often causes irreparable damage to everyone involved.

If someone close to you is in denial, you are already equipped to be a better helper by having read this. Don’t go along with him, don’t cave in to him, and by all means, don’t confront him openly.

The best thing you can do is give him this report. When he reads the story of Nathan and King David, he may be ready to say, “I am the man.”

If you’ve become aware of the need to free yourself from a bad habit, you’re already in stage 2.