Need to Know If You're Ready to Take Action On your Debt?

Have you had the sleepless nights and the sweats? The realisation that you owe all that money and you see no end to the situation.
I think that that is a common situation when you become aware of your debt issues. I've come across this model of behavioural change called the Transtheoretical Model. It seems to explain how I've come to tackle my debt issues.
There are five stages and these are:
Pre-contemplation where people are not clued upto the issues and not sufficiently motivated to do anything yet.
Contemplation where people are better informed both for and against but are forever thinking about the issues. They procrastinate.
Preparation where people are committed to take action very soon.
Action where people take focused action to address their issues.
Maintenance where people are working to stop themselves falling back into old behaviour.
You need to work your way from one stage to the next. It's the way the human mind works apparently. You can't skip steps and you have to start at the beginning and the first stage is when you get the sleepless nights, etc. Until you know that you've got a problem your unlikely to do anything. Then you're swamped.
Stage two is when you try to find out as much information as you can about your situation and more and more info and you think and weigh up and evaluate and delay and the pressure builds up and up until…
Stage three when you work out a plan of action detailing the steps you hope to take to tackle the problem and through to stage four where you carry out your plan and see the results mount up over time and finally in stage five you have actions and tricks to keep you from returning to your old behaviours.
The Transtheoretical Model has been used to tackle debt reduction, to stop smoking and many other types of problem behaviours, It has proven to be very useful in helping people to understand the stage they are at and the stages they need to go through to be successful in their struggle to achieve their desired goal.
It's a broad model that still needs you to develop a detailed plan that suits the particular behaviour you are trying to beat.
Sites like this one are aimed at helping us develop and share actions that have or are working for each of us.
As for me I'm in the Preparation stage and starting some actions that I hope will help me succeed.