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Maintenance is just as important as planning in regard to letting go of bad habits for ever.

Many people have a target to reach a certain weight or fit into a smaller size of clothing.  Once they reach their goal, they may well celebrate.  After all what is one celebration when they reach their goal, they may continue to celebrate and suddenly discover that the weight loss, the smaller clothing have turned into weight gain and the new outfits being too tight.

To avoid this happening, a maintenance plan is required.  One example if you have reached your ideal weight or clothing size is to follow the Dukan method.  This is actually a diet regime, however, once you have reached your goal, you maintain the ideal you by just eating protein on a Thursday.

The Dukan lifestyle is famous in France.  On Thursday if you go out to some restaurants, they have the Dukan choice of protein on the menu!

To read more about the Dukan diet, visit :

How the Dukan Diet works – The French diet that is supposed to end the obesity epidemic – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks.

The better the planning, the more you can be prepared to succeed before taking actions to let go of the bad habit, the easier it will be to succeed.

Have you ever thought you would like to give up something or develop a new and good habit and just started straight away?  How long have you kept going?  How many times have you tried to change?

With planning, you are preparing to change your life!  Yes, giving up bad habits and replacing them with good habits has wonderful rewards.

Why is planning so vital?

Would you go on holiday without making any plans at all?  If you have done so, what have you left behind?  How else have you suffered?  I was amazed to learn how many people leave their passports at home.  They are then distraught that they cannot get on the plane and fly off to a wonderful holiday.

Planning is essential to ensure a successful new way of life.  By letting go of one bad habit, what good habit are you going to put in its place?

As you exchange bad habits for good ones, you find yourself making changes more easily in other areas and thus creating greater contentment with life.

In order for habit change to succeed, support is essential.  There are many different types of support and choosing what suits you is entirely up to you!

Think about what support means to you.

What kinds of support would you like?

For instance are you looking for someone to:

* listen to you

* galvanise you into action

* give you advice

* ask thought provoking questions

* lift your spirits

*  share their knowledge

Choose people who you know will be positive and supportive in a way that is helpful to you.

It is also useful to have a diverse group of individuals to support you at different times as you go through the process of habit change.

Some people are empathetic listeners, others are inspiring when the going gets tough.

Think about the types of support you would like.

Do you need company, or would you prefer to chat on the phone or via email?

What times and days are mutually convenient for the support to take place?

What happens in an emergency – it may not be an emergency to others, but it feels like an emergency to you!  Who do you ask for support in this case?

Looking at the kind of support you would like and asking the people you have available to support you in a specific way, will all help you to succeed in letting go of bad habits.

As well as friends, family and colleagues, there is also professional support which may include coaching, EFT, REBT etc.

Limiting beliefs are knowing in your mind that a concept is absolutely true, when in fact it is false.

An example might be a belief that you are always a failure.

Look at this more closely – do you really fail at everything?

Are you able to walk or cook or read or have a conversation?

Answer Yes to any one of the above and that shows you are a success in at least one or more areas.

Now that you have discovered that thinking you are a failure is a limiting belief, you can change it to : Sometimes I am a success!

Limiting beliefs are caused by emotional insecurity.  This starts in childhood from the way we perceive experiences and absorb the beliefs from the people around us in our lives. This continues right the way through our lives.

Some limiting beliefs start so young and stay with us into adulthood so we are unaware of them.  At school I was always bottom of the class and took it for granted I was a failure.

Imagine my surprise on joining the Navy and coming top of the class in training.  Was I a latent genius like Winston Churchill or were the other people in my intake even more of a failure than myself.

It was only then that I discovered this limiting belief.

The truth is that I am neither a genius nor thick and stupid.  I have abilities and talents where I succeed and other areas which can be improved when I clear my limiting beliefs and put in positive ones in their place.

Are you feeling tired?

What have you been doing?

If you have been doing chores, then what has been your perspective?

Have you thought this has to be done and I’m doing my duty?  This thought is negative and creates tiredness.

Have you thought about enjoying the task and apreciating what you are doing instead?  This is a positive thought and creates a feeling of satisfaction and positive energy.

If you have a negative thought, how can you change it into a positive one?

There are an infinite amount of limiting beliefs.  The more you clear, the easier it becomes to change bad habits and choose good ones in their place.

Self esteem is the way we think about ourselves in relation to how we use our energy and recognise our confidence.  The more we use our energy positively and the more we appreciate how easily we can do things, the higher our self esteem rises.

At the golf club there are golfers who moan and complain that their golf is in a dreadful state.  The result is they go out and play a bad round of golf.

By changing their thoughts to thinking positively, they could instead be thinking about how they could improve their golf and take constructive action.

People enjoy playing golf with me as I lift their spirits and their golf improves.  Golf is a game of the mind – visualise a beautiful shot, know it will happen and then hit the ball.  The results are rewarding!

In the physician heal thyself manner, I had a blind chip up a hill and on to a plateau.  I applied my visualise and know technique, hit the ball, walked on to the green with no sight of my ball.  I told my partner it must be a birdie, walked straight up to the hole and Yes, there was my ball in the hole!

I felt great, my self esteem rose and good golf continued.

Would you like to feel more confident?

Think about what makes you feel proud about yourself.

What was it about the event or the situation that made you feel good about yourself?

Write down as many instances as you can think of where you felt happy and good about yourself.

Keep the list near to you for frequent reference and add any other situations as they come up in your memory.

In case nothing leaps into your mind, here are a few ideas to get you going :

Perhaps you have been kind to someone – helped them with something you can do and they are unable to do.

Maybe you have been really good with doing your exercise daily and can give yourself a pat on the back for the routine of exercising and the reward of feeling better.

You might have won a competition – sporting activity or literary or artistic or something else.

Would you like to use your energy more positively?

When you get up in the morning and it is pouring with rain, what do you think to yourself?

Oh, how awful it is raining would be a negative response.

Oh, how wonderful to have such perfect weather for doing my tidying, filing or another indoor job that needs doing would be a positive response.

To use your energy positively, start by observing what you and other people say.  As you become aware of negative statements, change them in your mind to something positive.

A word of warning – others might not be ready to hear you change their negative speech into positive words, so wise to either check first or just make the positive changes in your mind.

Let’s take an example – I never fail – negative words

becomes – I always succeed – positive words

If you say these two phrases out loud, which one makes you feel better and uplifts you?

Keeping your thoughts and conversation positive can really enhance your energy as well as your feelings.

By increasing self esteem you have taken a step towards letting go of your bad habits and replacing them with good ones.

Fear will crop up when letting go of bad habits.  Dealing with fear is essential for habit change to succeed.

Think of a habit you might like to change, ask yourself what the biggest fear is that could prevent you from letting go of the old habit.

As an example, I wanted to let go of being ill.  For many years I had an unknown brain disease which prevented me from having a life.  On deciding to let go of poor health, I asked myself what was stopping me from enjoying good health.

Being ill was bliss because it meant I did not need to see or talk to people.  As an introvert, being on my own is ideal.  The fear of having to mix with people was so great that I had prevented myself from seeing the truth.

Where did this fear originate?

I’m a soft touch and have always helped anyone that needed it until I realised that I was just being used to the extent I had no time to myself.  I didn’t know how to handle people and would much rather be left alone.

Do you see the negative side of things rather than the positive one?

On the surface I was an optimist and always cheery with a joke, but subconsciously I must have been negative and resentful.

Do you mix with negative people who love seeing the difficulties that prevent success?

A lot of the people I was helping used to moan and appear helpless, so that is another way that I can now see I was mixing with negative people.

Did something happen – a situation, an event, a person or an experience that left you feeling afraid?

If I was well, how on earth would I  learn to get on with people and make some genuine friends.  I was terrified of choosing people who would just abuse my kindness.

Was it something else?

Possibly not being able to relate to people enhanced my fear.

Discover what is really going on

This happened in a peculiar way.  My mother was suddenly dangerously ill with possibly 24 hours to live.  My father had motor neurone’s disease and could not speak or drive.  He refused to let anyone live in the house with him.

This situation completely changed my life.

Suddenly I had the energy to drive nearly a hundred miles a day to take my father to visit my mother.   It was like living on autopilot for three months while my mother remained in hospital making a miraculous recovery.

There was then my mother’s rehabilitation at home and my father’s deterioration of health.  As time went on, I forgot about being ill.

For some reason I was unable to see my fear, however, the situation of looking after my parents changed my focus.  It also helped me to realise that people are necessary in life and that there are some good people out there!

How do you know the fear has been overcome?

Funnily enough I had a test recently.  Doing an exercise I put my back out.  It was painful for a couple of weeks and I was wondering what to do.  It suddenly occurred to me that the pain was self inflicted and there was no need for it.  I woke up the next morning and my back was fine!

Are you ready to face your fear?

Contact me jacqui@habitchangecoach.co.uk to see how I can help you to let go of your fears.

In order to let go of a bad habit it is important to have the desire to change.  If other people are wanting you to give up or let go, but you have no interest, then wait until  you have the need or would like to change. It is only when you are inspired and have the desire that you can start to prepare to let go of a bad habit.

Perhaps bad eating habits are making you ill, but the taste of those delicious chocolate eclairs bulging with cream are too good to even contemplate giving up, so you would rather suffer feeling sick and enjoy wading your way through several eclairs at a time.

Maybe you have just been diagnosed with an illness, perhaps diabetes and you go into “Poor Me” mode, completely unable to look at changes that will make your life a lot easier.

By asking yourself what habits you could change will help you to have a desire to let go of bad habits and replace them with good ones.

On being told I had some syndrome which meant I was likely to get diabetes, I immediately looked at my way of life and took appropriate action to change my eating habits and to take specific exercise that would help to put me back in tip top condition.

Happily, there is now no evidence at all of any diabetes or predisposition to it in my system.

It is amazing how the thought of possible daily injections quickly inspired my desire to let go of chips and chocolate and develop a good habit of having a choice of healthy foods ready for me to nibble or even have an extra meal.

Wanting to let go of a bad habit is one thing, making it happen is quite another!

What good is your bad habit doing to you?

So many bad habits for me to choose from!  Let’s take being a failure for this example.

What enjoyment does it bring to your life?

There are so many funny stories as to why I am a failure, it is easy to keep others amused.

What would you miss if you did not have the bad habit in your life any more?

No jokes to tell, so no longer an amusing person.

How would life be better without the bad habit?

I could start to be the real me, build my self esteem and become a success!

Changing this habit has been wonderful, it is now part of my life to think of myself as a success.

What made me want to give up being a failure?

I got fed up with people laughing at me and decided to show them and also myself that I can be a success, not just once, but whenever I choose to do so.

Using the tools I shall tell you about in future issues of the blog, you will discover how I turned failure into success and how it changed my life.  Just a few of my successes to show you what is possible :

* gaining a pilot’s licence

* achieving a world record in golf

* winning an amateur national golfing championship

* being headhunted to write a couple of books which sold successfully