SELF DEVELOPMENT

Use your Palmtop to end bad habits and begin good ones now!

Anthony Robbins, in his book Awaken the Giant Within, proposes that the old notion that change takes a long time, even for seasoned habits, is wrong. His idea: You can change anything in a second, no matter how long its been a problem, no matter how many times you've tried and failed in the past. All you have to do is associate enough pain with doing the old habit, and enough pleasure with doing the new one you are changing to... and poof! The change is made. Its a simple idea, and it works!

Your pain should be whatever works for you doing something you don't like to do, doing something embarrassing, volunteering time to the needy, etc.

My pain option of choice is money. Lets say you want to change your habit of watching television on week nights. Your pain could be to donate $20 to a needy family each time you catch yourself doing this. One or two times at $20 and you stop. If $20 isn't enough to stop you, just raise the price till you do. Its that simple.

Here, according to Robbins, is all you need to accomplish instant change:

• A clear idea of the old habit you want to change.
• A clear idea of what you want in its place.
• A big enough dis-incentive (pain) attached to doing your old bad habit.
• A big enough incentive (pleasure) attached to doing your new good habit. (This can be simply the good feeling of not doing the old habit.)
• A support group of people who will hold you to your commitment, no matter how much you plead for mercy. The reason that such attempts at change failed me in the past was because after I wrote them down as instructed, I never looked at them again. Even when I posted them on the mirror in the bathroom another suggestion of most of the books I've read I stopped noticing them after the second time I passed them.

ON THE PALMTOP

Use World Time as a Geography Game