You Can Change Your Behavior

Changing behavior is difficult but doable. Breaking a bad habit, an addiction, or a behavioral pattern destructive to relationships, takes much committed time and energy. To succeed, you need to have the desire to change, the knowledge of how to change, and the discipline to carry it out.

According to Drs. James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DeClemente, in their book, Changing for Good, there are six stages for changing behavior. You have to pass through these stages, and sometimes more than once, before you can effect true and lasting change.

– Precontemplation. Persons in this stage deny they have a problem or anything that needs changing. They typically think that others should do the changing, in order to accept them the way they are.

– Contemplation. In this stage, persons acknowledge they have a problem and begin to think seriously about solving it. They realize they’re stuck, unfree, in a self-defeating pattern. Of course, recognizing a problem is not the same as solving it. Persons can linger in this stage for years, like smokers who realize they need to quit smoking, but who do not really believe they can succeed. Afraid of trying and failing, they keep on smoking, telling themselves, “Someday I’ll quit.”

– Preparation. Persons enter the preparation stage when they plan to take action within a month. This is the time for final adjustments just prior to actually attempting to change. It is also the time for making public one’s intentions, for gaining support from significant others, and for making oneself accountable to them. It is normal to feel ambivalent about impending change; one may have to keep convincing oneself that such a change is both possible and for the best.

– Action. In this stage, persons begin modifying their behavior. They throw away the cigarettes; they remove the sweets from the house; they pour the alcohol down the drain; they avoid casinos. Yet action is not the same thing as change; to win a battle is not to win the war. Persons have to be prepared for multiple battles, and they must have a solid action plan and timetable.

– Maintenance. During this crucial stage, persons seek to consolidate the gains made during prior stages, while struggling against lapses and relapse. They strive to solidify new habits of thought, action and feeling. A disciplined commitment to maintenance is vital for success. Nature abhors a vacuum: you must fill the empty space created by your change with new patterns of behavior and ways of thinking, or you will likely fall back into the old patterns. This stage can last a few months or an entire lifetime.

– Termination. Reaching this stage is the goal for all who attempt to change. At this point, a former pattern or addiction is no longer a temptation or threat; here one has confidence that the old behavior will not return. One can now live without fear of relapse.

There is much debate about this final stage. Some experts doubt that certain behavioral patterns or addictions can ever be finally terminated, but only blocked through a disciplined life of decreasingly wary maintenance. Addictions like alcohol and gambling may never be fully eradicated, but rather held at bay, one day at a time, albeit it with greater confidence and fearlessness.