How to Change Habits

Changing Habits According to Charles Duhigg

According to Charles Duhigg's book 'The Power of Habit', almost half of our daily actions are habits rather than deliberate, conscious decisions.

What is a habit?

Habits are the actions you perform repeatedly without noticing, automatically.

It is the way you talk to yourself, the food you eat, how you sleep, and how you react in different situations.

What is the mechanism at work behind this well-oiled habit machine?

Research shows that simply learning the mechanism behind habit formation—understanding what goes on inside our brain—increases our chances of building a habit, sticking to it, and overall, believing that we are capable of creating stable, long-term change.

So how does our brain work?

The brain is the machine that operates us. The beauty is that it is a flexible machine, constantly changing. Our brain is made up of many neurons. Between these neurons, there are connections that transmit signals like an electrical wiring system.

What we do, think, and feel directly affects the connections between neurons in the brain—we can create new connections, eliminate old ones, and make connections thicker/stronger or thinner/weaker.

Through a process of learning, practicing, and repeating actions, we change the wiring of our brain—we create new connections and thicken and strengthen existing ones.

The more we repeat a certain action and practice it over and over, the more we strengthen and thicken the connections related to it. And the thicker the connections are, the higher the chance that we will repeat this action. It is a self-reinforcing loop, until the action becomes automatic—becoming our new habit.

It might be a bit hard to picture, but imagine a path in a field that many people walk on every day; the path will remain wide and clear for all to see. If people stop walking on it every day, it will eventually disappear as wild plants grow over and obscure it. For a new, distinct path to be created in the field, many people will need to walk on it over a long period.

In this way, practice and more practice turns into an automatic habit, which is actually the foundation for stable and long-term change.

In fact, our brain strives to be efficient and consume as few resources and energy as possible, which is why it seeks to develop habits. It is economical for it. When you build a habit, you save mental energy. You develop fixed, automatic responses to cues, situations, and even people. If you left your brain to rest quietly, it would try to turn almost any routine action into a habit and minimize the number of decisions it has to make.

Just knowing how these patterns form in the brain, and being able to actually visualize your cells building stronger connections, helps and provides motivation to build more habits.

How is a habit formed?

A habit is formed in the brain through a three-stage loop:

• Cue/Trigger - A stimulus that signals the brain to operate automatically and deploy the habit.
• Routine - Routine - An automatic action or sequence of actions that requires no conscious thought.
• Reward - The benefit or prize we receive as a result of the action.

Over time, as soon as the trigger/cue appears, it will immediately associate with the reward we get, and the action we perform will become automatic and unconscious.

For example, a feeling of stress, overload, or disappointment will lead to the automatic eating of carbs or sweets to soothe the tension and induce calm and comfort. Once the brain learns that cookies create a good feeling due to a quick, temporary rise in blood sugar levels, it will push us to eat a cookie every time we feel stressed.

Humans can make something rewarding based on a conscious decision. That is, by identifying the cue and the reward, and finding a new action that responds to the cue and provides a similar reward. This is how you create a new habit. For instance, the reward of exercise for people who do it regularly is the post-workout 'high' caused by the release of endorphins that contribute to a good feeling, as well as a sense of achievement with improved performance.

If our goal is to exercise regularly, we need to associate a cue that reminds us of the reward and leads us to form an exercise habit—such as putting on sports shoes and clothes as soon as we enter the house or in the morning. This cue will connect to the good feeling after the workout and establish the habit of regular exercise sessions.

Using this method, any habit can be changed. If you find yourself snacking all morning, try to identify what reward you are seeking. Is it satisfying physical hunger? If so, perhaps you could eat a more nourishing breakfast, or alternatively, add a mid-morning snack containing a fruit and a complex carb. If the reward you seek is relieving boredom or needing a break, then instead of coffee and cake, perhaps you can go for a short walk or chat with a friend for a few minutes.

It is important to create a new, desirable habit to replace the one we want to eliminate. The rule is that developing an alternative habit requires willpower, taking about 21 to 30 days of effort and determination. Remember that willpower reserves are not unlimited. While willpower is a skill, like a muscle, it gets tired when overworked; therefore, you should work on changing only one habit at a time.

Charles Duhigg, who researched habits, talks about another component that helps change a habit: hope and optimism. Even people who were stuck in severe habits managed to change them through the power of hope, by believing they were capable of changing. To change, you must believe things can improve. Pure pessimists will likely struggle to change. Even in health, the most significant predictor of recovery from illness and injury has been found to be a person's degree of optimism about their healing.

When the urge to go buy coffee and rugelach arises, is it a craving for the rugelach themselves, or is the need completely different? If it's a feeling of hunger, maybe an apple will satisfy it. If the need is for energy, perhaps a cup of coffee or tea can be a substitute. If what we need is a time-out, a walk around the building might be a nice alternative!

To identify the reward of a specific action, like eating cookies, it helps to track the exact sequence: Where am I? What time is it? How was I feeling? Who is with me? What did I do right before I ate?

The way to change habits is to identify the cue, examine the reward the habit offers, and change the routine action. Some habits are simple and others are more complex, but they can always be changed.