Practical tools you can use today
Tools by category
The SMART toolbox is a set of practical, science-based tools you can use on your own or in a meeting. You will find two sets below: 4-Point Program® tools for anyone working to change an addictive or other concerning behaviour, and Family & Friends tools for people supporting a loved one. Every tool includes a worksheet you can download. Many work best when you talk them through in a meeting.
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA)
Every behaviour gives you something, or you would not do it. This worksheet helps you weigh the real costs and benefits of a behaviour so you can decide whether they still add up.
Download worksheet (PDF)Define Your Values (Hierarchy of Values)
Our values sit underneath most of our feelings and decisions, but we rarely name them. This worksheet gives you a structured way to write them down and focus on what matters most.
Download worksheet (PDF)Five Questions
A simple set of questions about what you want, what you are doing now, how it feels, what else you could do, and how that might feel. A clear way to see what to change.
Download worksheet (PDF)Create a Change Plan
Once you are clearer about the future you want, this worksheet helps you map the steps to get there: the changes, your reasons, who can help, and how you will know it is working.
Download worksheet (PDF)Practice Self-Compassion
Recovery can bring up shame, guilt, and frustration. This tool helps you meet those moments with care instead of judgment.
Download worksheet (PDF)Urge Log
Urges are the mental and emotional experience of wanting something. Logging when and why they show up helps you see patterns and plan how to respond.
Download worksheet (PDF)Put DENTS in Your Urges
DENTS is an easy way to remember practical ways to handle an urge: Deny or Delay, Escape, Neutralize, Tasks, Swap.
Download worksheet (PDF)Personify and Disarm
An urge is an impulse, not you. Giving it a shape or character can create a helpful boundary and make it easier to manage.
Download worksheet (PDF)ABC Exercise
Drawn from Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, the ABC tool helps you map an Activating event, your Beliefs about it, and the emotional and behavioural Consequences, so you can understand and change the pattern.
Download worksheet (PDF)Disputing Unhelpful Beliefs
Beliefs can be helpful, unhelpful, or somewhere in between. This worksheet guides you through identifying and challenging the unhelpful beliefs that can drive addictive or other concerning behaviours.
Download worksheet (PDF)Setting Healthy Boundaries
Healthy boundaries protect your time, energy, and well-being. They reduce stress and resentment and support lasting change.
Download worksheet (PDF)Lifestyle Balance Wheel
Change is not only about stopping a behaviour. This tool helps you look at each area of your life, respect where you are, and shift your perspective where you feel stuck.
Download worksheet (PDF)Explore New Pursuits and Passions
Think back to what you loved before the behaviour took up your time. This tool helps you bring old interests back and find new ones that make living satisfying again.
Download worksheet (PDF)Goal Setting
Goals point your life where you want it to go, and they matter most when they connect to your values. This tool helps you build clear, effective goals.
Download worksheet (PDF)Tools for people supporting a loved one
These tools are for family members and friends affected by a loved one’s addictive or concerning behaviour. They focus on communication, boundaries, self-care, and your own well-being. Use them on their own or alongside SMART Family & Friends meetings.
Your Coping Behaviours
This worksheet helps you review the ways you have tried to change your loved one’s behaviour, how you have coped with the situation yourself, and whether those approaches have been helpful. It also invites you to consider what you may want to do differently.
Download worksheet (PDF)Emotional Check-In
This tool helps you rate how you are feeling across several emotional scales, including hopeless to hopeful, lonely to connected, unsafe to safe, anxious to calm, and exhausted to motivated. Tracking these ratings over time can help you notice changes in your emotional well-being.
Download worksheet (PDF)Make Plans with Yourself
This worksheet helps you identify the self-care you need regularly, the activities that feel nurturing, and the things you would like to do less or more often. Planning for your own needs can help keep them from getting lost among other responsibilities.
Download worksheet (PDF)Practise Using I-Statements
This exercise helps you rewrite blaming or negative statements as positive I-statements. It supports clearer communication of your feelings and needs while reducing criticism, blame, and defensiveness.
Download worksheet (PDF)Simply Listen
This activity gives you a chance to practise listening without interrupting, commenting, or planning your response. Afterward, it helps you reflect on what you noticed in your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and the experience of the person you listened to.
Download worksheet (PDF)Create Open-Ended Questions
This worksheet helps you practise changing closed questions into open-ended questions. Open-ended questions encourage more thoughtful responses and can help you better understand another person’s experience and point of view.
Download worksheet (PDF)Form Reflective Statements
This exercise helps you practise reflective listening by responding to another person’s words with a statement that reflects what you believe they mean or feel. Reflective statements can communicate understanding and reduce defensiveness.
Download worksheet (PDF)Develop a Support Network
This worksheet helps you identify people you could contact for social connection and emotional support. It also helps you plan how to reach out and challenge unhelpful thoughts that may prevent you from making those connections.
Download worksheet (PDF)Create Affirmations
This tool helps you practise giving specific, meaningful affirmations that recognize another person’s effort or helpful behaviour. It also invites you to notice how affirmations affect the moment, you, and the other person.
Download worksheet (PDF)Explore Ambivalence
This worksheet helps you examine mixed feelings about a change you would like to make. It asks what gets in the way, how old behaviours continue to pull you back, how you and others respond to inconsistency, and whether new behaviours can begin before old ones are completely gone.
Download worksheet (PDF)Pause and Allow
This four-step exercise helps you notice your emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, and reactions during an upsetting situation. It then guides you to pause, reconnect with your values, and choose a response that moves you toward what matters.
Download worksheet (PDF)Discuss How to Rebuild Trust
This worksheet uses the idea of deposits and withdrawals from a trust account to explore behaviours that build or damage trust. It considers both how your loved one affects your trust in them and how your own behaviour affects their trust in you.
Download worksheet (PDF)Resolving Fears
This exercise helps you name a fear, turn it into a what-if question, and plan how you would respond if it happened. Creating a practical response can make fear feel more manageable and reveal any deeper fears that may need attention.
Download worksheet (PDF)