MarkTwainsaidthat"habitishabit，andnottobeflung（扔）outthewindowbyanyone，butcoaxed（劝诱）downstairsastepatatime．"Thechancesofsuccessfullychangingnegativebehavior（36）___whenyoumakegradualch
Mark Twain said that"habit is habit，and not to be flung（扔） out the window by anyone，but coaxed（劝诱） downstairs a step at a time．"The chances of successfully changing negative behavior （36）___ when you make gradual changes that give you time to （37）___ negative patterns forpositive ones．
On any given day，countless numbers of us get out of bed and （38）___ to begin to change agiven behavior"today．"Whether it be exercising more，drinking less，managing time （39）___ orsome other change in a negative behavior，we start out with high （40）___．In a short time，however，a vast majority of people fail and are soon doing （41）___ it was they thought they shouldn't be doing．
After considerable research，some researchers believe that behavior changes usually do not （42）___if they start with the change itself．（43）___，they believe that we must （44）___a series of"stages"to adequately prepare ourselves for that （45）___change．Once you have analyzed all the factors that （46）___what you do，you must decide which behavior-change technique will work best for you．
According to the psychologist Albert Ellis，most（47）___problems and related behaviors arise from irrational （不理性的） statements that people make to （48）___when events in their lives are different from what they would like them to be．For example，suppose after doing （49）___on an exam，you say to yourself，"I can not believe I failed that easy exam．Iam so stupid．"By changing this irrational"catastrophic"self-talk into rational，（50）___statements about what is really going on，you can increase the （51）___that positive behaviors will occur．
Positive self-talk might be （52）___as follows："I really didn't study enough for the exam．I justneed to prepare for the next （53）___"．
Such self-talk will help you to recover quickly from （54）___and take positive steps to correct the situation．Some other technique like purposefully （55）___or stopping ne