“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.
