Foster a good relationship with your inner self. There is a lot we don’t understand about head talk but one thing we do know is that the head talk is what leads us to decision making and if that talk is flawed, negative and angry (derogatory) then willpower will be diminished.
I went through a lot of new-ish recovery the last 10 years and can tell you from experience that if you clean up the head talk and eliminate the negative talk, habits will change quicker and easier.
I created a third person (healthy Gary) to talk to and be the parent to the scared voice and the negative voice in my head (negative is my mom and dad – scared is my true sad self) – slowly but surely I negotiated, very lovingly (lovingly even to the negative voice) the stuff the voices were saying and developed a dialog that helped create a sense of safety for the weak voice and a sense of love for the negative one.)
And my weak voice began to feel more safe and protected, changes started happening at an incredible rate and will power grew as well. With my inner voices all on the same page, I made deals with them all to get things done: Little (weak) Gary would do exercise because he wanted to meet girls. Negative Gary turned into ‘warning Gary’ as he realized he was just going over the top and we would listen if he toned it down.
I created a safe place for my voices to thrive. I know this sounds silly but this shit works like no one’s business. It helped me grow my internal age from about 13 emotionally to about 27.