Four Steps

Debt is a form of enslavement, the victim is deceived into breaking a simple rule:
Spend less than you earn.

Spending less than you earn is very similar to another simple rule many struggle with when overweight:
Eat less than you burn.

Health and wealth and happiness are very inter-related. Getting control of your health can help you to get control of other areas of your life. Taking control of my eating habits helped me break away from other bad behaviors and get my financial situation under control.

With any change in life, you start by learning, then setting goals, making a plan to achieve them, and acting on your plan. The last step is critical, never wait to act. So learn what you should learn, get a plan for your goal, and GO!

1 Learn
You have to learn a better way, you can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. Learn what to do. For example, don't buy a gym membership and never learn how to safely exercise because you may hurt yourself and be worse off than before. Similarly, you should research budget plans or debt elimination strategies and pick one that you firmly believe will work for you, one that people like you have been successful with. This is also a time to get motivated and inspired by others who have been successful at making the change you are making. Finally, write a list of what benefits you will have from making the change (or start with this list), but keep it handy.

2 Goal != Dream
Good goals should be a specific and small, they should be steps on your journey toward your dreams and desires, their should be a deadline or target date for your goal. A dream to be a millionaire is not a goal. Good example of a goal would be to lose 10 lbs by December 2010, or pay off all credit card balances before July 2011.

3 Plan
Very important third step is to plan, be aware of your life and the obstacles you already have to accomplishing your goal, account for those in your plan. Some unexpected obstacles will blindside you, you may get pregnant, you may have a huge unexpected expense, or experience a job loss. Things happen that are out of your control and can impede your progress, expect them to happen but realize they happen to EVERYONE, and realize obstacles happened to people who were still successful with their goals. Decide to be one of those people, the ones that didn't give up or give in to challenges. Use the knowledge you gained to make a detailed plan. Keep in mind that your plan should not be unreasonable, your plan should be actually physically possible for you to do 100% of the time. Your plan should make sense to you, you need to believe that following the plan will work, not just hope that it will.

4 Act
Make a commitment to accomplish your goal with your plan. Think no-matter-what-I-am-doing-this, then as you act, no-matter-what, do it, stay committed. Decide now that you will always decide to go on, then never change your mind about it. You have to be a stubborn, hard-nosed jerk about it, because excess fat and debt are stubborn hard-nosed jerks too. Use the inspiration and motivation from other successful people to support you and help you to avoid falling backwards into addictive behaviors that take you away from your goal. If you look, you can find inspirational stories from people who had challenges accomplishing the very same thing you are trying to accomplish. Keep at it until you see movement, until you see a change you really are proud of, until you reach that goal, then immediately start over with step one and do it again. Don't bask in your awesomeness for a second, because that's a great time for an old behavior to creep back into your life. You achieved something, it felt great, it was great, don't ruin it by undoing that hard work.