Track your temptation-to-confidence ratio

Confidence in your ability to resist temptation must outpace the pull of the old behavior.

Why it works

TTM measures "self-efficacy" and "temptations" as two competing forces. Maintenance is stable when self-efficacy across all relevant situations exceeds temptation. Tracking both — rather than just confidence — reveals which specific situations remain high-risk and need targeted coping plans before relapse occurs.

How to do it

1. Rate your confidence on a 1–10 scale in several specific situations (stressed, socializing, bored).
2. Rate your temptation in each of those same situations.
3. Any situation where temptation ≥ confidence is a relapse risk; build a coping plan for it.
4. Revisit the comparison monthly — the gap should widen over time.

Evidence

TTM measures self-efficacy and situational temptations as key predictors of relapse. Higher self-efficacy and lower temptation have been shown to predict maintenance of behavior change across a range of health behaviors. (observational)

Self-efficacy is a general predictor of performance in many frameworks; the TTM-specific situational confidence measure adds granularity but the comparative advantage over simpler self-efficacy measures is unclear.

Sources

• Velicer et al. (1990), "An expert system intervention for smoking cessation", Addictive Behaviors

Common mistake

Monitoring only general confidence ("I feel good about this") without mapping high-temptation situations — the ones that don’t feel like risks until they are.