The thirty day trial technique is a good one for virtually all habits. Habits that happen without your conscious realization (particularly mental habits) can often be helped with additional leverage. If you’re interested try googling the “swish technique NLP. If done properly this should give you a bit of extra conscious awareness so you can more easily stick to your trial.

-Scott

I won’t comment on your specific situation, but I will say that there isn’t a single technique that is universally applicable. If you find something that doesn’t seem to work, don’t do it, regardless of whether myself or another “expert” claims it does. You are your own expert.

Nice website. I got here from a link in DaveDraper.com’ newsletter.

I’d like to mention one form of leverage most people have never been taught how to use: the idea of giving yourself rewards for meeting the small goals that must be done to accomplish your bigger goal. Creating a rewards system for yourself is a great way to increase your discipline and motivation. More information can be found in a book called “Self-discipline in 10 Days”, which is the best book I’ve ever read on habit change.

Too often we try to change habits by threatening ourselves with punishment if we fail to do what we tell ourselves we “should” be doing. We rarely reward ourselves in simple ways, on a daily or weekly basis, when we follow though on our small but difficult goals. We rarely plan out specifically how we are going to reward ourselves. A detailed rewards system is a great motivational tool for getting things done. If you need to do something, and you are asking yourself “do you want to do this really tough thing?”, the answer always comes back “NO!”. But if you ask yourself, “Do you want this REWARD?”, the answer is always “YES!”. It’s a great motivator. Always keep the rewards in mind, both large and small.