Change Your Habits = Win at Life
In 1892, the famous psychologist William James wrote, “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.”
According to Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger, in experience-sampling research in which people recorded once per hour what they were thinking, feeling, and doing, about 43% of actions were performed almost daily and usually in the same context. We don’t often realize that our everyday lives do not consist of actions based on our decisions but on habits!
Photo by Estúdio Bloom on Unsplash
WHAT ARE HABITS
Habits are defined as routines that are practiced regularly. They can be part of any activity, ranging from eating and sleeping to thinking and reacting, and are developed through reinforcement and repetition. As William James discussed in his Principles of Psychology, habits help conserve higher mental processes for more demanding tasks but can also promote behavioral inflexibility. In other words, habits can be divided into three groups. The first group is the habits we don’t notice because they have been part of our lives forever—like tying shoelaces or brushing our teeth. The second is habits that are good for us and which we work hard to establish, like exercising, eating well, or getting enough sleep. The final group is our bad habits—like smoking, procrastinating, or overspending.
WHY HABITS MATTER
"We are what we repeatedly do" - Aristotle.
Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays a crucial role in developing emotions, memories, and pattern recognition. Decisions, meanwhile, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as a behavior becomes automatic, the decision-making part of your brain goes into sleep mode. It can be beneficial- allowing our brain to focus on the more crucial tasks of the day. But it can also be detrimental to our productivity and happiness. Think about it. We wake up, brush our teeth, tie our shoelaces, and drive our car, but we also scroll on social media, procrastinate before actions, smoke while we have a drink in our hand, or eat fast food just because we are in a shopping mall. So what happens if we use this knowledge to understand how bad habits hinder our ability to live a more fulfilling life? Researchers from Duke University have shown that over 40% of what we do is determined not by decisions but by habits. This suggests that we change a huge part of our lives by eliminating bad habits and creating good ones. People who fully understand this have been able to find wonderful new ways to change their lives for the better.
HOW TO CHANGE HABITS
According to Charles Duhigg, author of ‘‘The Power of Habit’’, this process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical, mental, or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.
If you want to change or create new habits of any kind, keep the following formula in mind:
CUE + ROUTINE + REWARD = HABIT
Let's see some examples of the different components :
The cue (essentially a trigger) can be a time of day, a specific location, other people's actions, your physical or emotional state, or repeating external events. For example, a lousy cue can be opening Facebook and scrolling mindlessly for an hour or stepping into a clothing store and buying things you do not need or have the money for.
The routine is what we do, like brushing our teeth, working out at the same time of day, and going to work.
The reward is the benefits we get, like feeling energized after a workout, boosting our mood after a walk in nature, and feeling full after a meal.
SO HERE’S THE PLAN!
I will break this down into two sections: 1. How to change an existing habit, and 2. How to create a new one.
How do you change an existing habit?
We are often told that small changes matter and that gradual improvement is reliable. Not in this case! Habits are like weeds, stubbornly rooted inside our minds. In order to beat the bad ones, we have to go full out and kill the cues that trigger them. Derek Sivers article ‘‘Overcompensate to Compensate’’ explains it like this:
Let’s use the metaphor of a bunch of bricks on a seesaw. Right now, all the bricks are stacked on one side, which is how you have been.
To make a change, most people don’t do enough.
If you do something small and sensible, it’s like moving one brick to the other side. You’re still unbalanced.
To make a change, you have to be extreme. Go all the way the other way. It will feel like overcompensating, but you have to stack a huge pile of bricks on the other side.
That extreme effort will help you balance where you are and where you want to be. It will become the new norm before the ‘good’ habits occur.
If we explore this concept further, I would like to mention another method introduced by psychologists: Going Upstream.
Going Upstream is a set of concepts based on removing the context cues of unwanted habits beforehand so the habit doesn’t activate. It’s backed by experimental evidence and fits with our standard habit model.
The idea behind Going Upstream is that one of the best ways to disrupt a habit is to go straight up to the top.
By that, I mean you’re targeting the source of the phenomenon, i.e., whatever’s causing it at the very top of the chain. We know from the standard habit model that habits fire in the presence of specific context cues. And many of these cues are in the environment.
Let’s work on an example:
The Cue: scrolling on your phone instead of working towards your goal, whether finishing a project, working on your business, working out, or training your skills.
The Routine: Whenever you need to work on a goal, you get distracted by your phone. You get distracted by the pinging of messages, opening Instagram and ending up scrolling, etc.
The Reward: It could be the distraction you seek to avoid doing something difficult. You might be looking for endorphins from the quick satisfaction of scrolling.
CHANGE THIS SCENARIO BY OVERCOMPENSATING
Overcompensate by removing the cue, a ka the distraction from your phone. Silence your phone AND set a timer so you do not have to look at it for a set period, no matter what. I usually set mine for 3-5 hours. That gives me a significant amount of time to let my focus go on the task I want to accomplish. The reward will be significantly higher in this new habit. Getting something done that matters to our mental health and future is hard to measure.
How to create a new habit?
We must provide simple cues to create new healthy habits that give us a sustainable daily routine.
Let’s work on an example:
Your goal is to run a marathon.
The Cue: leave out your running shoes, choose a cute workout outfit, research training plans online that inspire you, buy healthy snacks and foods to fuel your daily performance, join a runners group, and map out routes for your runs.
The Routine: you start to follow a strict training plan and diet to aid your goal. You will surround yourself with people trying to reach the same goal.
The Reward: Achieving something difficult, no matter what it is, will feel like a reward itself. The feeling we get is incomparable—the feeling of being proud of ourselves. In this example, it might be that your body will be healthier and fitter and that you can achieve more. Your mind was trained on a challenging task, which can be transferred to other goals. You have gained a community of like-minded people.
THE IMPORTANCE OF WILLPOWER
In order to change our habits or create new ones, we need more than our goals or dreams. We need willpower. Charles Duhigg points out that willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success based on many studies.
As people strengthen their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym or a money management program—that strength spills over into what they eat or how hard they work. Once willpower becomes more robust, it touches everything.
Cultivating willpower is crucial if you’re ready to change your habits and create a more fulfilling and productive routine. If you want to learn how, check out my article How to Get Some of That…Willpower, and you’ll be on your way. You got this!
