Let C be a nonempty closed convex subset of a real Hilbert space H with the inner product and the norm . Let be a nonexpansive mapping with a nonempty set of fixed points and let be a Lipschitzian strong pseudo-contraction. We first point out that the sequence generated by the usual viscosity approximation method may not converge to a fixed point of T, even not bounded. Secondly, we prove that if the sequence satisfies the conditions: (i) , (ii) and (iii) or , then the sequence generated by a general alternative regularization method: converges strongly to a fixed point of T, which also solves the variational inequality problem: finding an element such that for all . Furthermore, we prove that if T is replaced with the sequence of average mappings ( ) such that , where and are two positive constants, then the same convergence result holds provided conditions (i) and (ii) are satisfied. Finally, an algorithm for finding a common fixed point of a family of finite nonexpansive mappings is also proposed and its strong convergence is proved. Our results in this paper extend and improve the alternative regularization methods proposed by HK Xu. MSC:47H09, 47H10, 65K10.