Breaking Old Habits
If there is one thing change I see time and time again which gets the biggest bang for buck in terms of results for my clients it’s changing their daily habits and routine. We work at changing their habits once a week with small, incremental changes to their routine; and although they are simple actions which look simple the reality is they can be one of the hardest things to get right and keep right.
Breaking habits might seem easy on paper. We’ve all heard someone say it ‘just replace one habit with another’. Whether it is replacing coffee with herbal tea, chocolate with fruit or alcohol with soda water … the list goes on. But if it was that easy why isn’t everyone doing it?
So What Is a Habit?
A habit is amazing! On a positive note they help shape and support a life of fulfilment with little effort. On a negative note they also do the opposite and support a bad lifestyle leaving us unfulfilled or worse sick and unwell.
A habit requires little or no mental effort, we do them with minimal conscious thought and they account for about 40% of what we do on a daily basis (cleaning your teeth, having a shower, going on social media etc). They are repeated so much they become automatic and we do them without thinking.
Forming a new habit or breaking an old one takes time, dedication and commitment. Take cleaning your teeth; its only second nature because we have been doing it day in and day out since we were children. A habit is a marathon not a sprint. And research suggests it takes on average a continued 66 days repetition for a habit to emerge.
Breaking Emotional Habits
For a habit to form we need a motivation, a trigger and a reward (B J Fogg), so in order to break a habit we have to remove one of these elements.
For this reason one of the most difficult habits to either form or break relate to emotion (and therefore the ‘reward’ element). Again take the analogy of cleaning your teeth, this is a non-emotional habit: you clean your teeth knowing the only outcome is to have clean teeth. It is not driven by an emotional desire or want but because of a continued behaviour we formed as children.
On the other end of the spectrum our emotional habits are our brains reward based learning process. To put simply, we are hungry, we see food that looks good, our brains says; ‘that looks good, its lots of calories and will help us survive – lets eat it!’ So we eat it, it tastes good, and we feel good (usually temporarily but that’s a conversation for a different day).
Our brains then remember where you were, how you were feeling and what you were eating so you can repeat this behaviour next time you are hungry. See food, eat food, feel good, repeat.
But our brains are super smart, and after a while figure out we can feel that same happy emotion regardless of the motivation. So instead of eating because we are hungry, we eat because we are sad or upset. Our brain still processes it the same way, it’s just a different trigger.
So How Do We Overcome Bad Emotional Habits?
Dr Judson Brewer believes the key is to stop fighting our brains, and instead tap into this natural reward based learning system. Instead of forcing yourself to stop eating chocolate, focus on being curious. Curious about what you feel like when you eat it. Curious about how you feel after you’ve eaten it. Curious about WHY you ate it. It might sound strange and far-fetched but stay with me…
The more you become curious chances are you will realise you were enchanted only with the thought of the reward (the anticipation of eating it), not the reward itself.
Over time (and with practice) your brain will become less enchanted with the thought of the reward, understanding that the actual reward is nothing but a desire. You will actually learn to become disenchanted with your behaviour and naturally start letting go.
By getting curious about our minds and bodies and becoming more self aware with our behaviour we can step out of old reactive habits and instead step back, take a second to evaluate the situation and be curious about what’s going to come next. For example, you are craving chocolate because you are stressed. BUT if you learn just to sit with it, realise the desire won’t last forever and stay curious about what emotion your body will show next, your mind will start to change and let go of those old reactive habits.
Now I know what you are thinking, this looks easy on paper too but the reality is just as hard! And I agree. I can’t solve a lifetime of bad habits in one blog. All I can ask is that you become more aware of your behaviour. And next time you have that desire to fall into bad habits just stop and think…. ‘I wonder how my mind and body will react if I don’t give in right now’? It takes a HELL of a lot of will power and some people will find this from within, others will need to seek external help.
And what else will help along this journey? Forming new habits to replace the old ones…which I’ll cover in my next blog.
In the meantime happy habit breaking.