But with the next breath you may tell yourself that your habit is not all that serious and that you could leave it behind at any time. Yet every time you’ve tried to quit — perhaps hundreds of times — you’re back at it the next day or the next week. In between attempts to quit, you conclude that you just don’t have the willpower to change. You’ve heard that other people manage to find the will and the way, but not you. This makes you feel so discouraged that you decide you need another cigarette, another candy bar, or simply a time-out from worrying about your bad habits.

Is there a way other than sheer willpower to free yourself of bad habits? The answer, according to a wide range of experts, is an assured yes. In fact, these experts mostly agree that the old idea of “willpower” may often be part of the problem. In its place, they offer an interesting mix of ideas for changing habitual patterns. Among the following nine approaches, you may find a new and creative way of taming your bad habits once and for all.

1. Forget willpower. Pay attention to the experience of your habits.

“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t,” says psychiatrist and acupuncturist Dr. James Gordon, a former chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. “It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.” Gordon, who is currently director of the Center for Mind/Body Medicine in Washington, has worked with many people who are drug-addicted and HIV-positive. He says that the issue of readiness for change in breaking a bad habit is the same whether one is hooked on heroin or cupcakes. “Most people don’t stop doing something negative and habitual until the noxious effects of it become so overwhelming that it seems absolutely necessary to change. A teenager who wants to get rid of acne will change her diet. A drug addict who wants to live will stop using drugs and will start meditating or exercising. It has to take on the importance of life and death for the individual.”