What’s up guys. Vihan here. When it comes to breaking a bad habit, you start off with all the
right intentions but eventually your environment and circumstances make you give in and stop
trying all together. Whether it’s trying to eat healthier, quit biting your nails or practice
meditation, habits can be hard to control. And even though these are behaviors that develop
and occur subconsciously, they also have the biggest impact on the outcome of our successes.
We normally associate sticking to a good habit or breaking a bad habit with how strong our willpower
is. If your willpower is strong, then that’s awesome, but for a lot of us,
it can just be really hard. So what if I told you that hacking your habits does
not rely on your willpower. Instead, your habits can be completely controlled once
you understand how they are constructed. This is where the Habit Loop comes in.
In the book The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg presents the concept of the Habit Loop
and breaks the formation of a habit into three stages.
The first is The Cue: A habit’s cue is anything that triggers the
behavior. It can be anything that you associate with performing the action. Cues can generally be
a location, a time of day, people around you, or even an emotional state. But more on this later.
The second stage is The Routine: A habit's routine is the most obvious
element. It's the behavior you wish to change like scrolling through your phone or staring
at yourself in the mirror for hours on end. It might even be a behavior you want to reinforce
like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or flossing your teeth at least once in your life.
The final stage is the Reward:
This is the positive reinforcement your brain identifies with the Routine
that you’ve just taken. It associates the Routine with the Cue as well so,
your brain remembers to repeat the behavior again in order to get the same Reward in the future.
Once you identify the “cue, routine and reward” behind your habit loops,
it becomes much easier to plan out how to change them. For instance, let’s say, it’s the middle
of the afternoon and you’re working at home on your regular tasks, which is your Cue. You decide
to take a little break and eat that freshly baked cookie sitting on your kitchen counter,
your Routine. Once you stuff your face, you start feeling happy and relaxed from the sugar rushing
to your brain, giving you a physical sensation of satisfaction, or your Reward. As a result,
you continue with this routine every mid afternoon or whenever you want to take a break.
This Cue is the starting point for each time you go through this Habit Loop. But it’s always
helpful to question whether that very cue that causes you to reach for that cookie is accurate.
Is it possible that the cue is actually hunger? Or Boredom? Or maybe that you just need a break
before plunging into another task? And how about the reward? Is it the cookie itself?
Maybe, it’s a change of scenery? Or the ability to get up and clear your mind?
The reward for a given habit isn't always as obvious as you might think.
While the reward for a daily cookie craving could be just the sugar,
it could also be the feeling of getting up and walking around instead of necessarily
walking to get that cookie. You may even discover that your cookie craving goes
away once you get up and get a glass of water instead. Identifying the reward happens through
experimentation and there are a number of reasons we may build a certain habit, but
it’s not always clear why we do the things that we do. By experimenting with different rewards,
you can discover what it is you are really getting out of your routine and how you can change it.
In order to break a habit, the key is to keep the Cue and the Reward the same and simply replace the
routine. For instance, a reward I often look for is something to satisfy my craving for novelty.
The cue will more often than not be when I have a small pocket of free time. The routine that
I’ve developed in such situations, and I’m SO sure is something that you share with me
is pulling out my phones and scrolling through my feed till my thumb gets sore.
But being aware of this is helping me begin to replace my social media
habit with a bunch of healthier ones, like reading or exercising,
while allowing me to be satisfied in the short run and appease my craving for novelty.
In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains that habits form such an integral part of our
lives and come into play when our brain is in autopilot and not consciously thinking
about every action that we’re taking. Neuroscientists have even traced our
habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which also plays
a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition. Decisions,
on the other hand, 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 kind of
just takes a break. Gaining control of the habit loop requires you to be aware of the decisions
that you’re making and the patterns that you follow once your brain operates on autopilot.
In my experience, I’ve found that simply understanding how habits work makes this process
easier. However, there will always be some self-discipline and patience needed to get the
results you want. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you stumble a bit along the way. Remember,
you’re trying to do something that is altering the way you have been wired for sometime.
For a habit to permanently change, you have to start by believing that change is possible.
It’s not easy to build habits and change existing ones, but hopefully by understanding
how this whole thing works, you might just be in a better position to make it happen.
I hope that you’re enjoying this habit series of videos, let me know what you
think down in the comments below and check out the rest of the series right here.
As always, don’t forget to like this video and subscribe and hit that notification bell
for more stuff from me every week. Thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you next time.