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Change Your Bad Habits to Good 改掉坏毛病养成好习惯 To get yourself started in a new direction, try the Three Ms. At the University of California, my students and I surveyed more than 2,000 years of self-change techniques--perhaps most of the major self-change methods that have ever been proposed by religious leaders, philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists. We also reviewed the scientific research literature on self-change, a topic that behavioral scientists began to explore in earnest in the 1960s. [2] Here is what we found: Of the hundreds of self-change techniques that have been suggested over the centuries, perhaps only a dozen are distinctly different. Many have now been subjected to scientific study, meaning that researchers have tried to see which ones work best. [3] Three deserve special mention: theyre powerful, simple and easy to learn. Whats more , individuals who have made successful changes in their lives--changes in eating habits, exercise regimens, career paths, coping strategies, and so on--often relied on one or more of these methods. [4] To get yourself started in a new direction, try the Three Ms: Modify Your Environment [5] People who have never tried this are astounded by the enormous effect it often has. One of my students got herself bicycling every day simply by putting her bicycle in her doorway before she left for school. When she returned home, that was the first thing she saw, and thats all she needed to start pedaling away. Ive known several people who have overcome nail-biting simply by buying 50 nail files and distributing them everywhere: in their pockets, their desks and their bedrooms. With a nail file always within reach, they tended to groom rather than bite. | 
