Imagine that each of our wishes comes true with a click: click and you no longer smoke, another click and you run in the morning, swim in the pool at lunch, and on the weekend you turn off your cell phone and play monopoly with your friends. Too bad life is different.
It’s just that certain actions become habits – and it’s harder for us to act against them. To act in a new way, a click isn’t enough – you have to try. We have found proof that it’s in the nature of the habit. It needs to be understood, accepted and decided to change.
Habits Aren’t Always Our Enemies
We need them to survive. Nature has made sure that humanity survives. That’s why in a dangerous situation we run. When there is enough to eat, we eat. When we are overworked, our body shuts down by itself, and we are lazy and want to just read a Casoo casino review or sleep.
We need to relieve the brain. Usually the brain works even when the person is asleep. While the body is resting, it sorts out impressions, maintains body functions, and so on.
The brain needs a lot of energy to process each thought. And instead of wasting resources processing the same task, the brain creates a program-the very habit. Now it only needs to do three actions instead of a million:
- Spot a familiar signal.
- Recognize it.
- Start the habit cycle.
People often act out of habit – they wash their faces, make tea, and turn on the computer automatically. Imagine what would happen if we analyzed every such action. We would only get out of bed for dinner.
Adding a Habit
For a habit to emerge, you need three elements: trigger, action and reinforcement. Each of these elements is a separate step that we go through over and over again until the behavior becomes habitual.
If you’re wondering how do I get motivated to begin this process, the answer lies in starting small and building consistency.
Trigger
This is the trigger for the brain. A trigger can be any stimulus: a situation, an emotion, a person, a place, a thought.
To understand what triggers you, you can track your behavior. Try to describe ten times when you acted in the same way, and then highlight where it all started. Similar responses are your triggers.
Let’s look at Haley’s example to see how this happens. When Haley’s being rude, her mood is bad – she feels that the world is unfair. To even herself out, she eats just one candy bar. And it’s as if the world is a kinder place.
The reason for this habit is Haley’s boorishness. But the feeling that she is something she is not is the trigger that causes her to crack open the candy.
Until the habit is formed, the brain doesn’t know how best to act. We can choose to react until the chosen behavior becomes habitual. Let’s say, instead of the same candy, start smiling at rude people and wishing them a good day.
But once we get used to it, the brain automatically triggers the “trigger → action” chain. So Haley pulls out the candy against the urge to stop snacking on stress.
Action
This is the specific command the brain recommends a person take after a trigger.
Haley is resentful, so she eats candy too often. Her habitual response is to make coffee, take the candy, and eat up all the resentment. If Haley acts differently each time: running to the store or squatting before getting her coffee, or washing her face and then eating, the habit won’t form. Repetitive actions only come close to becoming a habit when the third step, reinforcement, appears in this chain.
Reinforcement
This is the reward a person receives for his actions. Something that is pleasurable right away. Haley here feels a pleasant sweetness, joy, and even happiness – she instantly forgets about the boor who killed the mood. Haley feels good.
Habit
Trigger, action, and encouragement alone will not start a habit unless it’s reinforced. You have to repeat the chain many times before the behavior becomes routine. There’s no telling how long this will take-it all depends on the character, motivation, resilience, and elements of the habit.
On average, it takes 66 days for something to become habitual. During this time, we go through several stages:
- Denial. A person resists everything new, tries to do things the old way.
- Acceptance. It’s already easier to give up the old pattern of behavior, rollbacks to it become less and less frequent, and the reaction is more stable.
- Acceptance. Even at this stage, there are sometimes rollbacks, but the person is already more willing to change himself or herself and form a habit.
- Automation. The person has adapted to the new reality, and the behavior has become habitual.
If you want to make a new habit, it’s worth choosing something that isn’t too difficult.
Take a piece of paper and write it out:
- What’s slowing you down? What do you want to get rid of, what do you want to add?
- What is missing in your life? What do you need to do to feel better?
- What do you like or dislike about your behavior?
If Haley calms her nerves with a cup of coffee and a candy, she can try not buying sweets at all. If her willpower is enough, the plan is successful. But if something goes wrong, she can buy three boxes of sweets.
In her case, giving up sweets can be combined with giving up coffee. For example, drink water with lemon instead of coffee and candy. The main thing is to do this until the body isn’t weaned from the sweet.
Next, think about what habits can help this. For example, Haley has gained extra weight because of constant binge eating. Giving up candy won’t help get back to her former shape, but going to the gym three times a week and proper drinking regimen will.
Write it out and read it carefully. If there is no dissonance, try to implement this scenario in your life. Give yourself a week – if you’re not comfortable, try to change things.
Getting Out of the Habit
The more the habit is ingrained in your life and the more enjoyable the encouragement, the harder it is to remove.
Psychologists proved that you can get rid of a habit in just one day. That is exactly the amount of time it takes for the brain to break the established neural connections and make new ones. But we don’t recommend believing 100% of their conclusions – Haley couldn’t do it in a day. It took her a week and some effort.
Experts advise doing things that are contradictory or incompatible with habits. To avoid eating candy, Haley tried smiling – a difficult thing to do at the same time. At first she felt like a fool – she was being told nasty things and she was smiling. But by the eighth time, she realized that the method worked and there was no longer such a residue from the rudeness.
It turned out that a smile lifts the mood as well as candy. And people are uncomfortable being rude to a person who smiles back – the flow of negativity stops.
So to break the chain of habit, you need to add a counter-action – try to change the trigger, action or encouragement.
If Haley calms her nerves with a cup of coffee and a candy – she can try not buying sweets at all. If her willpower is enough, the plan succeeds. But if something goes wrong, she can buy three boxes of sweets.
In her case, giving up sweets can be combined with giving up coffee. For example, drink water with lemon instead of coffee and candy. The main thing is to do this until the body is weaned from sweets.
If you can’t do it yourself, you can go to a psychologist and work through the trigger with him. The specialist will help to change the attitude to the problem or to replace one emotion with another.
When we are stressed, our psyche can easily “roll back to the old version” – habits from the past. For example, being comfortable and going along with everything if the relationship with our parents once demanded it. Or to worry about every little thing if there was an unpleasant experience in the past.
Improving the quality of life, oddly enough, is also stressful. So if you were promoted at work, started earning more money, got married, or moved to another city, you need to adapt to the new conditions. But the psyche reacts in the old way, in the repeatedly proven way.
You can overcome the old patterns by practicing mindfulness, that is, periodically bringing yourself back to reality in phrases:
- Do I need to do this now?
- Can I afford to do things differently?
- What does the current situation really require of me?
There is another exercise. Think back to when the habits you’re trying to change started. Write down at least 3 facts about why the current situation is different than it was with you in the past. Next to each situation, write down what you should have done and why you should do things differently today.
