Poor habits lead to poor living, making you a victim of your own behavior patterns. If you want to curb a routine that hurts your health or finances, you’ve got to identify your triggers and vulnerabilities and position yourself to snap out of your tendencies.
Pick the Brain offers a step-by-step guide for habit-breaking. Here are some tricks from the post:
* Satisfy cravings with harmless rewards. When you do things you know are negative, it may be to receive some sort of short-term positive feeling. Try to substitute your indulgence with something less harmful to see if it satisfies your craving.
* Break down timing and circumstances that make you weak. Next time you feel like indulging in your habit, go ahead and do it but make a note of the time, your location, who you’re with and other circumstantial details. The next day, try to avoid falling into a similar situation that weakens your defenses and isolate what environmental factors make you buckle.
* Always have a plan. Formulate ways to decrease your odds of succumbing to a poor choice. And when you fail, don’t let yourself be discouraged. Instead, tinker with your plan and repeat the process until you find success.
5 Ways To Change A Habit [Pick the Brain]
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If you’re addicted to re-posting crap lists, I’m afraid there is no hope.
It’s almost getting funny. I don’t even have to get past the headline to know which articles are Phil’s. Is it likely a list, and probably not *really* related to consumer issues? SOLD!
Here, read this instead: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all
Hidden in this article about Target’s marketing schemes is a lot of really good information on habit formation and how to try to retrain yourself to new habits.
Consumerist Tip: Consume less.
Ask yourself: Have you formed a habit of skipping past inane content of this author, only to read and add snarky comments?
If so, there is hope.
I just have to glance at the format of the article without even reading the text to know that it’s that Pnil guy’s no-shit-Sherlock drivel.
This.
Phil is thinking about joining CSPI and needs solid proof on his resume that he can dribble with the best of them. /s
My favorite part is how he always posts the majority of the items from the list, but not *all* of them.
It ain’t plagiarism if you don’t copy the whole thing, right?
If it were not for this Phil guy you love to hate then you would have to find a new home to vent your elitismness superiorness, and that new home may have stricter mods regulating comments. He is making life easy for you, embrace it.
I think he’s deliberately messing with a certain segment of posters.
And besides, Phil is short for Phillis. He’s a She.
A lot of habits do cost you as a consumer. Smoking is expensive and drives up your healthcare costs. If you can get past the jones (like say, with Chantix), you still have to break the habit. The hardest time for me to give up the cigs was after dinner. Even without the craving, I still had to find something else to do at that time or I would still suck on the thing even though it wasn’t doing anything for me.
WHOA that last sentence didn’t come out right at ALL! X_X
Phil, I like your posts.
Hipster contrarian!