Shahroo Izadi, Behavioural Change Specialist and author of The Kindness Method.

Shahroo studied psychology and spent years in addiction treatment – NHS, community, prisons – helping people change when nothing else had worked. What she noticed: the tools that work for someone in recovery work just as well on everyday habits. She used them on herself, lost eight stone, and wrote the book.

I heard her on a podcast and bought it on the title alone. Changing habits with kindness instead of willpower? Drawing maps to change your negative self talk? I started the exercises and asked her on before I'd finished the book. My hidden agenda: learn her method by drawing it.

Here's the method. Her reader wants to change a habit – overeating, say – has all the information, and still can't. Wanting the prize isn't enough, and beating yourself up makes it worse. What works instead: know yourself, believe in yourself, like yourself. One choice at a time. Same tools, any habit.