“Old habits die hard.” It’s not just an idiom but a reality. In Fact we all have experienced this in the past and are even experiencing it every day. For instance, hitting the snooze button or binge eating, be it smoking or screen time before bed; this list goes on. We do want to break these habits. However, we end up repeating them and not to mention, regret them later. As if we are trapped in a loop.
How exactly do these habits are formed? And most importantly, what makes us cling to these unwanted habits which we want to get rid of so bad?
Why do we get stuck in a pattern?
Answer is our brain, which is constantly looking for ways to save efforts. And to save efforts, our brain converts a sequence of action into automatic routine. That’s how habits are formed. Since habits are automated, they do not require much thinking. Therefore, they just happen automatically. This effort saving cycle of human brain has huge advantage. Because it increases efficiency of our brain by saving efforts for tasks that require critical thinking. In fact if left to its own, our brain would convert possibly every routine into a habit.
And that is why, to break a habit we first need to understand it.
Understanding habit loop
Habit formation is a three-step loop.
Cue
Cue is a trigger that tells your brain to enter in an automatic mode. They basically fall in five categories: time (morning routines), location (walking past coffee machine and filling your cup), your emotional state (online shopping when you are bored), preceding event (after lunch you go out to smoke) and people around you (friends, colleagues). Cue is a stimulus that prompts a routine behaviour.
Routine
Routine is your repeated behaviour. It could be something you are aware of, like going for a walk. Or a less conscious one, like picking your cuticles. Basically, routine is the behaviour that you wish to change, when we talk about changing a habit.
Reward
Final component is your reward. It’s the gratification you get from that behaviour of yours. For example, browsing through social media to kill boredom. Rewards reinforces a routine which eventually forms a habit.
How to break these patterns?
Breaking a habit is more than quitting a behavior. Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, suggests the following framework for replacing bad habits with good ones.
Identify the routine
First and the most obvious step. Which behaviour do you want to change? Habits have a routine, so they are easier to identify. Once you have identified the behaviour, next is to look for the cues and rewards governing that behaviour.
Experiment with rewards
Reward is the reason a desired behavior is reinforced. Like browsing through your phone is the reward that kills your boredom. Or a reward for sugar craving is a piece of chocolate. These rewards keeps a routine in place and eventually form a habit. So, next time when you feel bored, try reading a book, or take a stroll in the neighbourhood.
Isolate the cues
Identifying the cue that prompts a habit is a crucial step in breaking it. So next time when an urge strikes you ask yourself the following questions:
- What time is it? (lunch break? bedtime?)
- Where are you? (near coffee machine? in your kitchen?)
- How are you feeling right now? (tired? bored? sad? excited?)
- Preceding event (just finished laundry? working on email?)
- People around you (alone? family?)
Jot down these cue that triggers your habit and you will see a pattern.
Have a plan
Now you have figured out your habit loop. You have identified your rewards that put your habit in place, your triggers that initiate your habit and the routine which follows. The next step is to have plan to shift the routine. Habit is basically a formula our brain automatically follows. When I see a CUE, I will do the ROUTINE and I will get a REWARD. To enforce healthy habits we need to experiment with the variables of this equation. Cue, Routine and Reward.
No doubt it’s easy to understand but challenging to implement. It won’t work immediately. It requires conscious effort, encouragement and a plan. Don’t try to make big changes at once. It’s better to take baby steps, one after another. And you will see that in no time your brain will set itself into a new automatic routine.
"Healthy habits are learned in the same way as unhealthy ones - through practice." - Wayne Dyer