Self Help Exercises
The following exercises can be helpful to give you greater awareness of the triggers and reasons for your gambling. Ultimately, they may help you to gain control of your gambling behaviour.
Gambling Diary
Keeping a record is important so you can gain a better insight into your behaviour, how much of your money and time you spend, how you feel whilst gambling, the triggers and the consequences of gambling.
In your diary entries, try to keep track of:
What you were doing
Who you were with
Time and money spent
What type of gambling
The consequences
Keeping a consistent record is important – depending on how often you gamble you may want to complete it between once and a few times per day.
After completing your diary for a couple of weeks and having a look back to your notes you may be able to identify some trends. For example, it may be that you tend to feel alone and anxious before starting gambling.
Gambling Diary
Keeping a record is important so you can gain a better insight into your behaviour, how much of your money and time you spend, how you feel whilst gambling, the triggers and the consequences of gambling.
In your diary entries, try to keep track of:
What you were doing
Who you were with
Time and money spent
What type of gambling
The consequences
Keeping a consistent record is important – depending on how often you gamble you may want to complete it between once and a few times per day.’,
After completing your diary for a couple of weeks and having a look back to your notes you may be able to identify some trends. For example, it may be that you tend to feel alone and anxious before starting gambling.
The Crossroads
This exercise involves weighing up the problems and the benefits of stopping or reducing your gambling.
Take your notebook and write down the negative things that may happen if I continue gambling, and any positives you can expect.
Then further down or on a separate page, write down the positive things you think may happen if you stop gambling.
This exercise will help you to identify the possible gains and losses of your gambling habits and maintain your motivation and commitment to improve your current situation.
Avoidance of risks and triggers
A helpful strategy, particularly in the early stages for people who are trying to stop gambling, is to learn to recognise and avoid situations that may trigger the urge to gamble. Avoidance is a recommended tactic until you develop the skills to cope and avoid relapse.
In this exercise, make a table with two columns. The first column is for things that trigger your urge to gamble. An example trigger is walking or driving past a bookmaker on your way to work. The second column is for things you can do to reduce the triggers – for the above example, this could be changing your route to work to avoid bookies.
Improve your problem-solving skills
It is very common that people who suffer from a gambling disorder enter into a process of circular thought – thinking that the solution to problem gambling is gambling. Winning a jackpot is an unlikely and unrealistic solution that will only make the problem worse.
By developing realistic ways to solve problems or worries that may be causing anxiety you will be able to improve your current situation.
You need to make a table with two columns, similar to the above exercise. In the first column write down the problem or worry – for example, gambling debt – and in the second, put a realistic solution. For our example, a realistic solution could be to unify all debts in one loan with less interest; agree on affordable payments; or ask a trusted individual to manage your finances until you are back in control.
Remember most of the solutions to life’s problems require time and effort and need to be tackled one step at a time.
Dealing with the urge to gamble
Delay: The urge to gamble won’t last forever. After a period of time the urge will pass. Try techniques to delay gambling as much as you can and eventually the craving will pass.
Distract: Fill the time that you would have used for gambling with an equally rewarding activity to distract yourself.
Decide: Make the decision to stop gambling, and remember all the things you have to lose. Cravings only remind you of the good things about gambling so challenge those thoughts and remind yourself of all the reasons why you decided to change and to stop gambling.
Look back at the previous exercises you have completed to help remind you how far you have come.
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You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.
You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.
For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances. Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.
We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.
Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route. You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job). Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?
If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.
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We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.
We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.
1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community
Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see
Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress
Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness
Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness
Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination
Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance
Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking
Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction
Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality
Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.
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One definition of health is:
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’
We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.
It gets more complicated…
The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life. We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.
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We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.
We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.
1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community
Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.
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Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.
The 8 are:
You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain. You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.
Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.
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People look at things differently. Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’. People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control
Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.
My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.
People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older. However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do. This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.
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No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.
At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt. We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.
However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.
The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.
This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.
Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.
Consequently we need to make some changes. The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones. Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.
We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.
It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.
It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.
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At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.
We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.
You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.
So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness). We do this by questionnaire. Which one is determined by the type of person you are:
By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.
You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas. We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.
In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.
We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.
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We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.
The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.
The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.”
Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.
These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).
This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).
These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)
Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.
Expressions of confidence – can change over time
Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change
Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change
Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation
Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.