Titration and Kindling... Easy Ways to help Keep your New Year's Resolutions.

Titration is an easy way to think about getting out of bad habits. Titration in this context means slowly lowering the quantity of something you are using in order to cut down or eliminate usage. One of the problems with keeping New Year's Resolutions is that your willpower consists of both "I will" power and "I won't" power. The power to do some things and the power to stop doing others. Quitting a bad habit like smoking cigarettes or drinking to excess is very difficult to stop quickly and completely for most people. Titration does a couple of things for you, it lowers the amount of the harmful substance or activity you are doing and it makes you more aware of when you do it-both of which help your overall health.

Kindling is the process by which an event is initiated and its recurrence made more likely. In essence, things you enjoy and that have positive outcomes you are more likely to repeat. Exercise is one way to activate the kindling effect, meditation is also a good way to initiate kindling. The difficulty with both is motivating yourself to start and finding the right kind for your needs.

The general idea behind both titration and kindling is to reinforce good habits and extinguish bad ones. Keep that in mind as you begin the New Year.