After deciding to improve in some specific way, then obviously you need to understand your problem, overcome your fears of changing and failing to change, and start to figure out exactly how you can make the changes you want. This entire book helps you do those things. This is potentially useful research, not so much in terms of naming the rather obvious stages in changing, but rather in terms of discovering how to motivate ourselves from one stage to another. A lot of people deny the need to make changes, even more want to change but can't get started. We must stay motivated.
Science needs to study self-motivation much more.
A valuable aspect of the following 10 steps is a simple system for analyzing your problem into five parts, which, in turn, will help you develop a comprehensive plan for changing yourself. This system, described in step 3, will help you understand any problem situation. This same 5-part system of analysis is also used in chapters 3 to 10 to help you understand how specific problems may have developed, are maintained, and could be changed. Then, chapters 11 to 15 describe in a simple cookbook manner how you can apply many different self-help procedures to each of the five parts of your problem. Every chapter starts with a detailed index.