Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class!

In this series, we’ve been looking at using pain management skills regularly.  For some of you, you may be doing pretty well and need only to tweak skills or practice a bit more regularly.  For others, however, you  may be tackling the more difficult task of starting a whole new habit.

A great personal development blog Zen Habits had an article recently related to habits that I wanted to share with you today.  Haider Al-Mosawi of Personal Growth Map writes that committing to a new habit doesn’t need to be a decision between zero commitment and 100% commitment.  You can try 1/2 habits.

What does that mean?  Rather than trying to commit fully to a new habit, you simply take a step in its direction.

Why is this better?  Your focus then turns to the progress that you’re making instead of the times you don’t succeed.

Here’s Haider’s article:  Ways to Form New Habits Without Really Trying

Other articles in this series:

• How to change a habit, part 1
• How to change a habit, part 2
• Breathing exercises, part 1
• Relaxation exercise, part 1
• Breathing exercises, part 2
• Websites that help you stick with your new habit
• How are you doing with your new habit?
• Try 1/2 a habit
• Visualization
• Feedback on changing habits, part 1
• Feedback on changing habits, part 2
• Guided imagery, part 1
• Guided imagery, part 2
• Stress management, part 1
• Stress management, part 2

Thanks to K W Reinsch for the image at Flickr.