Surviving Loneliness

1. Be consistent - Do it every day and at the same time of the day. Both daily repetition and cues like time of day, place and circumstances are critical in making a habit stick.
2. Start Simple – Start with a small change and build on success later on.
3. Remind Yourself – Place reminders and encouragements, especially the areas where you notice the habit meets most resistance.
4. Form a Trigger – Create a ritual you use right before executing your habit.
5. Realize Hidden Needs - The old (bad) habit you are giving up was fulfilling some need. Don’t ignore it, but adequately fulfill it with a new habit.
6. Encourage Yourself – Don’t give up even if you fall off the wagon every once in a while. Fight negative thoughts, by interrupting them with positive ones: “I’m no good at this, but, if I am working on getting better.”
7. Remove Temptation - Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you.
8. Associate With Role Models - Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror.
9. Run it as an Experiment - Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.
10. Swish - Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. Do it until you start automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.
11. Write it Down – Writing down the resolution makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result. Note both the positive benefit of the new habit and the negative consequence of staying with the old habit. Remember: you are doing this for yourself, no one else.

Source:  Scott H Young