You've most likely heard the saying, "we all have a choice," before.

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It's true, every single one of us has a choice. In fact, we make hundreds of choices every single day.

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From the moment you wake up you make a decision to check your phone or not check your phone as the first thing you do.

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Small choices each day add up to habits over time.

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To be successful in recovery means to begin making different choices, consistently, over the long haul.

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Achieving 7.5 years clean meant Jak had to make different choices early on.

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To recover from betrayal trauma meant I also had to be making different choices.

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Where we are today is because of the choices we made back then, and the choices we continue to make today.

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Currently, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check my email.

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Now I know the studies on checking your phone the first thing in the morning, and I know that I'm not grabbing my phone to scroll social media but rather to check important emails that may have come in from clients, I still want to change that habit.

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So, today, I'm going to do something that I usually do only with clients or in our paid email Savvy Answers, and I'm going to walk you through, step by step, how to break a habit and build a new one based on the habit I'm trying to break.

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Goal: Don't Check Phone Right After Waking

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Step 1: Change Environment

To stop this habit that I've developed I first have to assess my environment. To make lasting changes, the environment needs to be supportive of that.

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That means in the morning, I should not have my phone on my bedside table.

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Step 2: Leave Phone Outside Bedroom

This step may be obvious but how we go about changing the habit will be what is important.

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So, if every night I physically grab my phone and carry it to the bedroom, I need to do something different to stop the habit of grabbing the phone.

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That could look like setting a reminder on my phone before bedtime to not bring the phone into bed, or it could look like putting my phone in a drawer, or putting my phone on my desk and having a spot for it next to my computer.

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There are many possibilities on how I can break the habit of bringing the phone to the bed, but to really make sure this new choice works, I need to link this new decision to a decision I make each day around the same time and "link" this new choice to an already established habit.

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Step 3: Identify Which Habit To Link To

In the evenings, I like to make sure my desk is organized and ready for the next day. So, if I were to choose to make a spot specifically for my phone on my desk, I could make sure that when I organize my desk, I put my phone in that spot and that would have me build the new habit of leaving my phone outside of my bedroom.

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Step 4: Contingencies & Backups

Realistically, in the beginning I'm likely to make a mistake, so I need to ask myself how can I ensure that if I were to carry my phone into the bedroom, I can remind myself that I don't want to do this?

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One step I could make is to put a bunch of books on my bedside table and clutter it on purpose to not have space for my phone.

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Another, less visually disturbing step, would be to put a sticky note on my bedside table saying "no phone."

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Step 5: Put Into Action, Iterate, & Repeat

Now that I understand the steps I need to make to change this one habit, I need to start putting it into practice. Once I do, I can see if I need to make any more iterations to lead to success, and once I've mastered the process, I repeat it until it becomes engrained and it's an automatic habit.

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There you have it! The neuroscience behind making and breaking habits... which is exactly how I help clients.

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You can always try this on your own to see if you can begin to make shifts in your recovery, and you can even begin this today!

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However, if you feel you need more support and accountability, then you can always explore coaching.

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Either way, I believe in you and your recovery!

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Your guide in recovery,

Savvy Esposito

P.S. if you're not already a client and ready to make lasting changes in your life, marriage, and recover, hit reply and we can discuss whether it would be a good option to work together.

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