What is offered here is a lifetime training manual for developing healthy life management skills. Externalizing responsibility, or blaming someone or something else for your problems, is something that we've all done and it simply does not work.

You are going to have to take charge and take responsibility for yourself until you make it work. I understand that dancing with anxiety, fear, pain, boredom and self-doubt is a major part of your life right now.

You are listening to the constant chatter of the mind, those subconscious thoughts just below the surface, controlling awareness. These thoughts are confusing you, controlling you, and containing you.

START TO CHANGE IT NOW!!

Move in so close to that chatter of the mind, so close to that quick subconscious stream of thoughts that it scares you. Next, start to change it by focusing in on it and gently allow your powerful conscious thoughts to gently, very gently, bring the thought stream of the mind back into proper alignment.

Begin to free yourself from those thoughts! After all, they are only thoughts -- nothing else. At first, you must accept becoming more comfortable with the pain, anxiety and doubt.

Then, as you gain more and more control of yourself, and the healing from within begins, these feelings and terrors will slowly fade away like a stain being bleached out of a tablecloth.

Your progress will come in many stages and there will be many plateaus. Just as Robert Goddard, the father of the modern day rocket engine learned; he certainly didn't just sit down, and draw a set of plans for a fuselage and an engine. Nor did he get it right after a few tries. There were explosions and failures time after consecutive time.

As each attempt failed and fizzled before him, he went back to the drawing board, often confused, frustrated, and afraid, and examined both the strengths and weaknesses of his latest failed set of plans. He would then make revisions from what he had learned, and try again and again and again.

He built on what he knew worked for him, but most importantly, on what didn't. You know, there is tremendous value in repetition, reflection and persistence because each repeated effort is another step up the ladder toward unlocking the secrets of ultimate success.

So, let's agree together, right now, that there is no possibility of failure where your goals are concerned, only the continued advancement toward success!

I have noticed that most books that deal with behavior change usually state the need for definite goals. But, more often than not, they are goals that are too rigid and that interfere with getting the 'ball rolling' and maintaining momentum.

In real life, goals are something we are always reaching for, but seldom attain. Goals are better looked upon as being guideposts, something to focus on, but certainly not an end in themselves.

What's really important is for you to decide that you want to change the behavior in your life.

Equally important, is that you feel good about it and that you are on the road toward achieving that reality.

The four essential goals that I suggest should act as guideposts for moving from unhealthy habits to developing healthy habits are:

• Strive toward giving up dependent thinking and inaction.

• Always strive toward reducing the harm caused by your habit.

• Aim toward becoming comfortable with change and uncomfortable feelings.

• Establish a new lifestyle that is more rewarding than the old. (Get a [new] life.)

The concept of 'dependent' isn't new or really that useful. However, it does convey a basic truth: that all people with unhealthy lifestyle management habits seem to be unaware of how their thinking and behaviors are dependent oriented.

Without exception, I have never worked with a person who didn't wish that someone else would develop a magic formula that would make his habit easier to break.

I can't tell you how many groups/seminars/sessions I have conducted where people come to listen, and then go home and don't do anything with the information. They come back the following week and complain that nothing has changed.

Most typically, they will say, "Dr. Kern, I need more tools and skills." I reply, "You have all the tools you need, just stop procrastinating and do what you know you need to do. Stop whining about how hard it is because no one is going to do it for you. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll be free of your unhealthy habits and in control of your life."

Of course, I realize this is easier said than done, especially when your whole life has been based on that kind of thinking. Changing behavior requires hard, persistent work. It is the same story -- the sooner you realize that there are no short-cuts, no magic pills, and no easy solutions, the sooner you will arrive at your destination.

Stop looking around and asking "Why Me" or, "Why do other people have it so easy?" It's up to you to break out of your prison of negative thinking. Don't hide yourself in a prison cell of self-imposed isolation.

Mobilize yourself every day. You think that your habit is controlling you, but it is really your mind. Give thanks 365 days a year that you know where to look to find your way back home. You can conquer your habits, life can be like it was or even better than before you developed the habits.

You CAN go home again. Like the Nike athletic shoe advertisements say: "JUST DO IT!"

Your next goal should be to focus on reducing the harmful effects of your habits. I will repeat, focus on reducing not just eliminating the harmful effects of your habit.

Of course, this may result in you having to stop some activity or chemical use. Harm reduction simply means making the best of biological, psychological, and sociological factors which have and will continue to affect you.

The only attainable goal here is to get involved in the process of making your habits less and less destructive. You should strive toward becoming comfortable while working toward your goal rather than obsessing about the end result.

That 'perfect ending' probably will never come, at least not precisely the way you visualize it now. It is definitely not a requirement for a happy, healthy life. Your old goal of losing 30 pounds or never taking another drink again, or stopping compulsive shopping "cold turkey" may only work against you.

You must shift your emphasis to the realistic goal of reducing the negative impacts of your habit by working toward a new lifestyle of self-exploration. You have been operating on a 'fantastic' level, now it is time to operate on a 'realistic' level.

This is important, so let me repeat it. Your new lifestyle must become your principal goal. In fact, the other three goals listed here are merely ways of accomplishing this.

If you lose weight or stop using drugs, GREAT! However, those specific objectives should be secondary to your overall focus of creating a happy and healthy way of living the rest of your life. The process of change toward this new lifestyle needs to be your guiding focus.

To succeed you will need to become comfortable and familiar with this new lifestyle, and if you start to let go, you must refocus and get back on track. In my years of working with all kinds of people, with all types of unhealthy habits, it is the ones who are able to acquire this strong focus who are able to eliminate or significantly reduce their bad habits on a long-term basis.

Finally, you must learn to enjoy the process of change and accept that it is all right to be comfortable with the change. As you begin to see some progress, your self-esteem will increase.

But if you are focused on that final reward, you won't appreciate your achievements along the way. Change comes in small stages followed by long plateaus. The plateaus don't mean that you aren't changing. Enjoy the plateaus -- just "stop and smell the roses."

Similarly, like a runner warming up, part of your task in making lifestyle changes involves getting emotionally limbered up. That means learning to feel comfortable with personal evolution, developing keener insights into self-control, self-responsibility, environmental awareness and the dynamic nature of change and growth.

The goal of change in any and all forms is the essential key. The moment you create even the simplest change, you have taken another step toward developing and attaining a new lifestyle.

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excerpted from Chapter 1 of Take Control Now! – by Marc F. Kern, PhD
see order page for the book