Habit Breaking Resources

There are literally hundreds of books on the topic of how to break bad habits and develop good habits. The following books stand head and shoulders above the rest:

• Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway: How to turn your fear and indecision into confidence and action by Susan Jeffers. The author discusses the crippling effects of fear in her personal life and explains how she formulated a course of action for conquering it. Her answers are simple, her course of action difficult only because it requires courage.  This is a great little book for you to read and realize that there are others out there confronting their fear in the same way you are.

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful lessons in personal change by Stephen R. Covey. The author presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity; principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. This book made me want to be a better person.

• Changing for Good: The Revolutionary Program That Explains the Six Stages of Change and Teaches You How to Free Yourself from Bad Habits, by James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente. To uncover the secret to successful personal change, three acclaimed psychologists studied more than 1000 people who were able to positively and permanently alter their lives without psychotherapy. They discovered that change does not depend on luck or willpower.

• People-Reading: How We Control Others, How They Control Us, by Dr Ernst G. Beier and Evans G. Valens. This book offers an in depth understanding of our inner reaction to other people’s manipulative behavior. It gives insight to why we react the way we do and how and why we interact in our world the way we do, what we are saying about ourselves when we smoke, drink, and abuse substances.