First off, can a ‘short course’ really have two parts? For now, I’ll pretend the answer is “yes”.
We’re all busy, and are easily distracted in today’s hectic world, so I’ll cut to the chase. Here it is.
- Because of the way habits are formed in our mind/brain, we can’t stop (‘break’) habits. We can only change them.
- The best way of changing a habit is “identity-based” change, not willpower. In other words, become the type of person that naturally has the ‘good’ habit as part of who they are (and not the ‘bad’ habit).
Any questions? Do you need more? Really? (See, even though we often say “Just tell me the answer. Tell me what to do.” We really do want more.)
The slightly(?) longer course on habits is that they have 3 components: the trigger, the behavior, and the outcome (or results). And as a habit is getting built in our mind, and ultimately stored and replayed in our subconscious mind – which is so much faster than our conscious mind – we are keenly aware of each step. Our mind is very active as we identify and ‘remember’ the trigger. Our minds are working hard as we execute and ‘learn’ the behavior we chose based upon the trigger. And, of course, our mind is focused on evaluating the outcome, the results. Did we get what we wanted, what we hoped for?
But fairly quickly, our brain stops being so active, first, during the behavior phase. We’ve ‘learned’ that behavior. But our conscious minds are still actively searching for the trigger (the cue) and evaluating the outcome. Yet before long, our minds stop evaluating the outcome, because we’ve ‘learned’ what the result of the behavior will be. At this point, we’ve ‘learned the habit’, and our minds get so good at perceiving the cue, that we are rarely (consciously) aware that we’ve picked up the cue…that triggers the behavior…that creates the outcome/results. Voila! A (good or bad) habit is born. (Note that is the ‘habit-version’ of my mantra that “Our thinking drives our behavior which determines our results.”)
So since our minds are so good at picking up the cues that drive our behavior – and study after study shows that we’re consciously unaware of anywhere between 75% and 92% of our daily behavior – we can’t effectively ‘break’ (stop) our habits. Think about it. How can we possibly expect to effectively change our habits, when roughly 85% of the time we’re not even aware of what we’re doing or how it’s impacting our results? [Cheap plug: That’s why coaching is so valuable. A coach brings that awareness. But on this the story…]
The best we can do is change the habit (the behavior) by planning out ahead of time, what we want to do when that cue, that trigger comes along. So that when our brain perceives that cue, we do something else. So for example, rather than having a TV commercial being the trigger to run to the refrigerator (okay, nowadays there are so many commercials that we can just ‘stroll’ to the fridge) and grab a snack; we can decide that commercials are the trigger for us to drop and do five push-ups and 10 – okay 5 – sit-ups.
But how do we make that change? We’ll cover that in part 2. Part 2 will address ‘identity-based’ habit change.
