Even though you may be determined to start walking every day, you find it difficult to leave the house in the morning, no matter how determined you were the night before.
We all wish certain things about ourselves were different, such as our annoying habits or the actions we take despite knowing they are bad for our health and safety. But how can we bring about change?
Why Do We Get into Bad Habits in the First Place?
When I was Mark Bauerlein's teaching assistant at Emory University in Atlanta, he would often tell his students, “Writing is a habit, and a habit is something you do without thinking.”
A habit is a repetitive behavior that you do so often that it becomes automatic. As annoying as our bad habits are, habits serve a necessary purpose by making our brains function automatically, so we do not have to consciously make decisions about what to do. While that does not sound good, it is actually very good.
In his book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James Clear states the following: “Habits lighten the cognitive load and free up brainpower so you can concentrate on other tasks.”
Clear writes that the reason we as humans want to think automatically is that we have a limited amount of conscious attention and need to use it for the most important tasks.
According to Clear, your brain is constantly working to keep your conscious attention and focus on the most important task. In other words, the more routine our daily behavior becomes, the more energy our brains have to concentrate and address the bigger issues that may arise.
Healthy Habits Lead to Better Health
That implies that habits themselves are not necessarily bad. “Good habits can improve your health, financial independence, and capacity for learning,” according to Clear.
“You will have less time for freedom if you are constantly required to make decisions about routine tasks, such as when to practice, where to write, and how to pay the bills. You can only create the mental space required for free thinking and creativity by facilitating life's basics,” he wrote. Therefore, the issue is not that you should not have routines or habits that make your life easier, but rather that you should not engage in routine behavior that compromises your health and safety.
How Do You Become Aware of What You Want to Change?
According to Kate Hanley, author of How to Be a Better Person: 400+ Ways to Make a Difference in Yourself—and the World, who also hosts a daily podcast with the same name, awareness is the first step in breaking bad habits. “The simple truth is that you cannot break a habit you do not know you have. As a result, you need to become more aware of both the habit's benefits and costs.”
What then should we do? Hanley advises making three lists: the things that lead to bad habits (the triggers), the situations that encourage bad habits (the context), and the consequences of the bad habits you want to break (the costs).
“Do not think too hard when making these lists, but do not limit yourself either,” Hanley advised. If your bad habit is eating unhealthy snacks in the afternoon, the triggers could be hunger, a drop in energy, and an inability to concentrate after lunch. The context could be that you skipped lunch or did not get enough sleep the night before. The costs could be that eating unhealthy snacks upsets your stomach and prevents you from feeling hungry when it is time for dinner, which prevents you from consuming more nourishing foods, and every time you weigh yourself, you notice your weight gain, and you might feel guilty.
Your newfound awareness will assist you in creating a winning strategy once you have a clear understanding of these three factors. According to Hanley, it could be having a healthy lunch and packing a healthy snack, like carrot sticks and almond butter or a handful of nuts and dried fruit, in case you get hungry in the late afternoon. Also, you could go for a walk to clear your head and recharge rather than reach for dessert. Finally, you could make sure to get enough sleep so that you do not feel exhausted in the afternoon.
“It is not about willpower; it is about giving yourself what you really need so you do not have to rely on your bad habit to get you through the day,” Hanley explained.
Automating Signals to Trick Your Brain into Good Habits
What Clear refers to as a "signal" is what Hanley refers to as a "trigger." A signal that triggers a desire, leads to a response, and then to a reward. According to Clear, one of the best ways to break a bad habit is to stop the signals that cause a chain reaction of bad habits while simultaneously providing your brain with signals to carry out the good behavior.
For instance, if you feel that you are consuming too much caffeine and that it is preventing you from falling asleep, you may realize that you always buy a double cup of espresso when you pass your favorite coffee shop on your way home from work once you are aware of the issue.
Now that you have this awareness, you can eliminate the signal by changing the way you take it daily.
At the same time, you also come to the realization that one of the reasons you have a bad habit of drinking coffee at night is that you enjoy the aroma and the way it feels to hold a warm cup of coffee as if it were a moment of respite from your long day. Find a delicious and satisfying decaffeinated beverage like coffee to start; try golden milk or rooibos tea. Next, you need your signal. Leave your favorite mug on the counter in the morning before you leave for work so that it will serve as a visual reminder for you to make yourself a cup of this drink alternative to coffee when you get home from work, helping you to replace your bad habit with a good one.
Let Someone Else Hold You Accountable
It can be very helpful to have a friend who holds you accountable for your new, healthier behaviors and who also helps you become aware of the bad habits you are trying to break. Without a friend, sometimes just saying out loud what you are going to do in front of lots of people you love can help you change. Another fantastic idea is to form an accountability group. If you are already a member of a book-reading group that meets weekly or monthly, suggest that the group read some books about better habits at their next meeting.
Another trick that may be successful, though it is doubtful that behavioral experts would endorse it, is to make weekly or occasionally monthly bets with your family in which each of you adheres to the habit you are trying to build (exercise, creative pursuits, spending a specific amount of time on summer homework assignments, etc.). Then, write a contract, sign it, and include a penalty if you do not commit to your daily obligations.
Sometimes you can make "plus" bets, which means that if you make a mistake one day by not reading or not doing the math homework for 20 minutes, you are allowed to make up for it by doing the 40 minutes the next day, and sometimes you can take "sudden death" bets, which means you have to complete your self-imposed tasks—good habits—by midnight that night or pay the penalty to the other person.
This fun approach may not create lifelong habits, but it definitely encourages family members to prioritize the activities they enjoy and spend more time doing them.
Small Adjustments Lead to Observable Results
Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, explores life in his Analects, a collection of conversations and stories compiled by his students after his death in 479 BC, as explained by Harvard University professor of Chinese history Michael Puett and co-author Christine Gross-Loh in their book The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life.
Confucius' behaviors are described in detail in the book, including how he ate his meals and who he spoke to when he entered a room. Despite the fact that paying attention to these seemingly simple details may not seem to have much philosophical significance, Confucius thought that the question of how to live your life on a daily basis was the key to solving large philosophical dilemmas. Additionally, Confucius instilled in his students the value of small details.
“How you do anything is how you do everything,” as my friend and world-renowned cyclist Dave Nourie says.
Whether you agree with the concept or not, it is undeniable that changing bad habits for better ones and making small daily changes to your lifestyle will prolong your life and make it healthier and happier.
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