Sarah Spencer
If you’re a few days into your New Year’s resolutions and going strong, good for you! You’ve gotten on the right track to stop doing things that don’t serve you, start doing things that will help you and just generally become a better human adult. Look at you, over there kicking ass. Pat yourself on the back. You’ve earned it.
Whether or not you make New Year’s resolutions, chances are you have a bad habit or two you’d like to break. From quitting smoking to just making sure dirty clothes actually make it into the hamper each night, there’s always something to change to make life just a little bit – or a lot – better. So, here’s how you can start kicking bad habits to the curb this weekend, and maybe even start some good ones while you’re at it.
A Fundamental Change
Let’s start with a fundamental change in how we approach kicking bad habits.
Most of what we do in life depends on habits. Not just the big ones we notice, like checking email when you get to the office or letting the dog out first thing in the morning, but all the little moments in between the big ones. Flushing the toilet after you go, getting out of one side of the bed instead of the other, starting on a specific machine at the gym, and sitting in a certain spot on the couch at night are all habits you may not even remember that you have unless something happens to get in the way of them.
Habits are how we get through life without constantly having decision fatigue, overwhelmed with options for every little thing. Our brains like habits because it lets them go on autopilot, even for just a moment. The problem is, sometimes we let our brains fall in love with bad habits, and we have to figure out how to disentangle ourselves from them.
What habits really are
Before we can talk about kicking bad habits, we first need to go over what habits really are.
Every habit has 3 basic parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward. The cue is something that we experience, which may or may not be in our control. The routine is what we do in response to that cue. The reward is a good thing that comes from that routine.
For example, a bad habit of smoking may start with a cue of walking by a specific place that people usually come to smoke on breaks, have the routine of smoking a cigarette or two, and then have the reward of feeling the nicotine from the cigarette. A good habit of exercising every morning may have the cue of seeing workout equipment on the floor ready to go, the routine of doing a quick set or yoga flow, and then the reward of endorphins and feeling accomplished. The same 3 basic parts are present in both good and bad habits, in equally influential ways.
What makes bad habits so hard to break is that we can’t always control the cue, and when we don’t replace the routine to get a similar reward, it’s almost impossible for our minds to let it go. Think of it as leaving your brain hanging on stage, they just said the line where you’re supposed to walk out and say yours… but you’re chilling in the greenroom, letting them stumble through without you. You wouldn’t do that, because that’s rude and will probably keep you from getting cast ever again at that theatre. So, don’t do it to your brain either.
Instead of leaving your castmate (brain) hanging, you run on stage, but you tweak a few things that didn’t work in your routine last time. It works better, the audience loves it, the director sheds a single tear at your artistic brilliance. Sure, your brain is a little miffed at first, but they learn to like the new version. In fact, after a while, they start to like it better, too.
This leads us to what Charles Duhigg calls the golden rule of habit change: you can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it. Instead of trying to willpower your way through avoiding cues and resisting routines and just going without rewards, we need to find alternate routines. Some examples of this include:
- Instead of watching TV (routine) when you get home (cue) to relax (reward), try doing meditation or some stretches instead, using the same cue and resulting in the same reward.
- Instead of grabbing a bag of chips from the counter (routine) when you’re slightly hungry (cue) to feel satisfied (reward), make healthier snacks like fresh fruit just as readily available and grab those instead.
- Instead of going to the bar (routine) after a long day of work (cue) to get social time (reward), join a book club or start volunteering to get the same camaraderie with a healthier activity.
So, this week, instead of just forcing yourself to avoid all the bad habits you’re trying to step away from, pay attention to the cues and find better routines that have the same rewards. Your brain will thank you, and your future self will too.
