Have you heard of Zen habit? Probably not, so let me give a description of what “zen habit” captures. Zen habits are set of guidelines showcasing how you can make a change in a habit and adopt a new desired habit to stop smoking. According to zen habit, the cause and reason of every human problem is rooted deeply in the human mind. You feel sadness, unsafe, angry and frustrated because of your mind. Have you ever noticed if you set your mind on achieving something, naturally you will have a vision of how you want the process to go and what you want to achieve. Try to notice as you envision this- all you want is that all goes smoothly without any difficulty. This vision is called the Mind movie. The truth is that the mind movie can never match reality, so the better way to go is accepting reality the way it is.
So how does this aid in quitting smoking? The reason why you are not able to easily break off from you smoking habit is because of your mind. Just notice your mind during that period you are trying to resist the urge, what is it doing -secretly it is pleading and negotiating with you to give in to its desires(smoking). So you will better keep down those urges by resisting the demands of your mind. This might be difficult at first but gradually your mind will adjust to it. So in this article we will be discussing on how to apply the zen habit game to better control your urges. It is interesting and fun to engage in.
Zen habit game.
The game is better played when you have multiple partners to engage in the habit change with. If you have friends who also have one or two habit they want to change, you can gather them up to play the game with you. This is how the zen game works.
Commit.
The game is a weekly game, so you’ve got to repeat the process all over again at the beginning of every week. The first step is that each member in the team should commit to the team. Each member in the team is accountable to the team as a whole to give account of their habit change. Each member should also propose a reward and an embarrassing consequence.
Track.
The next step is to create a spreadsheet record where the performance of each team member is recorded in a point system. For each successful day you are able to resist smoking, you get one point. But if you miss out on two consecutive days, you lose one point on the first day and two points on the second day, if a third day follows in a row, you lose additional three points. There are ten point to be gotten in all. Five points plus one point bonus for observing five consecutive days and if you observe seven days straight you get additional two points.
Reviews.
At the end of each week a review is to be done. Two points are accorded for reviews. During the reviews, days you missed out will be examined and the obstacles that made the habit change difficult will also be treated and a solution will be proffered. These solutions should be noted as they are to be practised the following week.
Score.
If at the end of first week you are able to score above average, then you treat yourself to the reward but if not you get an embarrassing consequence. In the following weeks, an improvement is expected, if you fall below the score you made the previous week, you get the embarrassing consequence but if you got more points you get a reward.
