“Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.” Anonymous

Once you have identified why you want a change in your life, the fundamental question is, why do you want to change? This discovery process is essential, to grasp the fundamental reasoning behind the change you want to see in your life. Without this understanding process, you may discover that you approached change in a particular habit, for the wrong reasons. You may discover that you really never wanted to change this particular habit, hence you had not found a strong enough reason to motivate the change. This inconsistency in thought and action , starts to manifest itself in different aspects of your life. 

A few questions you need to ask yourself once you have decided on what changes you want, are:

1. Why do I want to change?: When answering this question write down your responses. This will help you visualize all your unconscious thoughts. The number of responses and reasons will vary depending on the type of habit and how deeply it is ingrained in your system. 

2. How is this habit negatively affecting my life?: This question seeks to re-affirm all the negative aspects of the habit. For example, if you continuously lose your temper, visualize how it affects your work, relationships, personality and outlook towards life?. We tend to forget that the repercussions of our habits, affect every aspect of our lives. It is only when we consciously bring their impact to the fore, do we realize the damage we are doing by continuing with them.

3. How will changing this habit benefit my life?: This question should help you visualize what life would be like with a change in place. This is a powerful visualization exercise, it re-enforces certain messages into your subconscious. For example if you have made a vow to stop smoking, visualize how this will benefit your lifestyle through better health, having more energy, not having a dependency, saving money, not having to run to the gas station in the middle of night, being more confident and just generally feeling better about life. These could be some of the things you could have on your list.

These questions will help you put more thought into why you want to do change a certain habit. Waking up one morning with a hangover and vowing to stop drinking is not adequate. When you want to make any sort of transformation in your life, there needs to be concentrated thought behind your rationale. Without this we will continue to make half hearted commitments which will only further reduce our ability to believe in ourselves and bring about positive change.