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the CHANGE tool

Sometimes people who worry find that they end up with significant behavior problems. Behavior problems are loops that involve the M - Movements and behavior - component in the ITEMS Model social media late at night. But they can also be behaviour problems that can have serious consequences such as alcohol. These range from mild problems like watching too much TV or doing too much, drug, pornography or gambling addictions.

The CHANGE Tool gives you the key ingredients needed to successfully change a habitual way of behaving. The steps in the process are outlined below. 

C – Commit to change

You need to decide to commit to actual change, rather than just continuing as you have in the past. Ideally, you should tell someone else that you have made a commitment to change. Put up a sign on your desk or wall about how and why you have decided to change. You can also create a pros and cons list on your phone. This will set out why it is sensible for you to put the effort into changing. Read these out to yourself a number of times when you are having difficulty with your change process.

H – Halt your negative triggers and use your positives

We all have things that trigger our less than desirable behavior. If you are trying to stop a behavior, avoid the negative triggers that get you started with your undesirable behaviour. This may mean hiding away things that trigger the behavior that you are trying to change. It may mean not visiting places or people that are triggers for the behavior in question. And it may also mean not getting yourself into states where you are more likely to be triggered, e.g. by letting yourself get too tired or too hungry.

When attempting to introduce a desirable behaviour, identify the positive triggers that will lead to you doing the positive behaviour. Set things up so that you will experience these positive triggers. For instance, if you are a student and want to study more, go to the university library where there will be a number of triggers for you to do study.

A – Accept your feelings

For some of us, problem behaviors are a way to distract ourselves from experiencing feelings that we do not want to feel. We can develop healthier ways of distracting ourselves (e.g. physical exercise) or work on processing our feelings through using the Accept How You FEEL Tool. We can also do other things such as: developing a daily BE CALM Practice; doing other self-development work; or, seeing a therapist.

N – Narrow the scope of change you need to make

Trying to change major things in your life can feel daunting. However, you can narrow the scope of your change. For instance, if you decide that you are just going to focus on making a particular change for today, that can feel a lot easier than thinking about making a life-long change. The next day, you can then make the same decision again to focus on just making the change for that day, and so on.

G – Get on with the change

If you get underway with your new behavior, it will start to develop a momentum of its own. If you are delaying jumping into your new behavior, try using the TO DO Tool to get yourself going. Once you do start to make the change you will find that it starts to become self-reinforcing.

E – Encourage and reward yourself

When you are going through a change process, you usually have ups and downs. Encourage yourself by thinking about how fantastic it is that you have now started out on the road to change. This is a million times better than just sitting around, not doing anything constructive about changing your behavior. Even if you have found it difficult so far, the mere fact that you want to change is an essential step in the journey to long-lasting change. In addition to encouraging yourself in this way, also identify rewards for yourself for making the change you want to make. First create small rewards for having successfully undertaken initial minor change steps. Then, put in place larger rewards for when you make major behavioural changes and when you maintain the new behavior for increasingly long periods of time.

Take a behavior problem that you are dealing with. Go through each of the steps in the CHANGE Tool and analyze what you need to do to apply the Tool to the particular problem that you are working on. Write a description of your commitment to change and the advantages of changing and put it into your My Phone Brain. Put in place a comprehensive set of rewards to keep yourself motivated throughout your change process.

Please note when you are doing any type of psychological or self-development work, if you find yourself feeling overwhelming emotions, troubling thoughts or actions, you need to talk to a health professional.