I successfully applied CBT to stop scratching my beard and plucking hairs until it looks apalling (blank spots, irregular). Not awesome but really satisfying for me personally. Earlier I shaved the beard once I started this. Or avoided growing a beard in the first place. But beards are attractive and I got positive feedback about mine. Thus I tried to get rid of my not unusual behavior.
I used this CBT approach from Attention Control is Critical:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy has a highly successful approach for breaking habits, which requires only a very subtle alteration to this process. You notice that you are biting your nails. You immediately focus your attention on what you are doing, and you stop doing it. No rage, no blaming yourself, no negative emotions. You just stop, and you focus all the attention you can on the act of stopping. You move your arm down, focusing your attention on the act of movement, on the feeling of your arm going down, away from your mouth. That’s it. You can go back to whatever you were doing.
Actually I enhanced it by using positive reinforcement on myself (I took this from Seligmann); I praised myself whenever I succeeded in keeping my hand away. It worked quite well. Took me about a week. One relapse when I didn't pull thru until the behaviour was extinguished. But now I'm stable. I can even stroke my beard thoughfully.
Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of yourself as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread. This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesome things they have done. Not "will do". Not "are working on". Have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?