Keep a log of your lapse experiences. Find patterns in your behavior so that you can modify your environment and plan ahead for the next time you are faced with a similar situation:

• What were you feeling?
• Where were you?
• With whom were you keeping company?
• What was the time of day?

It also might be helpful to jot down a behavior chain in a journal. This involves nothing more than writing down the series of events, situations, feelings, emotions, or experiences that led to the unwanted behavior. Your behavior chain might look something like this:

• I was having a decent day at work.
• My supervisor asked whether she could speak with me in her office.
• She proceeded to tell me that our department would have to make some changes and that my colleague and good friend would be leaving.
• It would be my responsibility to perform his job duties until we could find a more suitable arrangement.
• I was overwhelmed and angry.
• I drove home in a “stew.”
• When I got inside, I went directly to the kitchen to decide what to have for dinner.
• Nothing looked good.
• A package of cookies was on the counter, so I ate a few of those while I pondered what to fix
• Still couldn’t find anything that looked good, so I had some chips, too.
• Settled on a frozen pizza but was really hungry, so I took the bag of chips into the living room and turned on the TV while I waited for the pizza to bake.
• When it was done, I was already engrossed in the TV program, so I took the pizza into the living room, too.
• By the end of the show, I had eaten six slices of pizza and felt sick to my stomach; I was too tired to go for a walk.
• I cleaned up and berated myself for being such a glutton; then resolved to “do better” the next day.

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