Coffee. Biscuit. Coffee. Biscuit.
That’s one of the most common habits I see – people who can’t have a coffee without a little processed treat on the side. Harmless if taken occasionally, but when you’re having five coffees before 2pm, that’s a lot of biscuits by the end of the day…
And as I tell everyone, it’s the little things that make the big difference.
But these are just habits, so simply put, if we replace bad habits with good ones, problem solved! But we all know what the bad and the good habits are, it’s just sometimes we don’t realise the magnitude of the impact they’re having on our success or indeed how to change them and swap out the coffee and cake for hydration and exercise…
Habits are about a thirst for “change of state”.
What’s your bad habit? The one thing you always try and kick, but fail? Checking your phone after 7pm? Always reaching for the chocolate in front of netflix after dinner? Always grabbing a biscuit to go with your brew? Ever wondered WHY you formed the habit in the first place?
Well the very first time you did it, you felt something that you needed to change. Perhaps it was boredom, anxiety, confusion, you needed a mood lift. You took a gamble “If I do this, maybe it’ll make me feel better…” and for a fleeting moment it did. And so when you had the notion of that feeling again, you did the same again. In fact from then on, whenever you felt that emotion incoming, your brain’s computer is now hard-wired to replicate that behaviour because it changed your state from something negative to something positive. That’s essentially what habits are. Nail-biting when your anxious, it soothes you. Grabbing a biscuit in the afternoon gives you a brief pick-me-up and breaks apart the boredom of the day and the lack of energy you feel, however temporary the effect may be. Always ordering dessert after dinner because it’s the reward for getting through the meal and eating your veggies…
So habits form because we want to feel good and then our brain learns a pattern. Which explains why they’re hard to shift. We’re basically asking our brain to shy away from something we KNOW in the moment makes us feel good, even if it results in regret and remorse later on. Our bodies ask us to give in to the dopamine which drives us toward the good things, it’s how we’re wired up.
It’s up to us to drive new habits in the direction of success.
But what if we want to replace rubbish old habits with new, healthier ones? Like heading out to the gym before work four times a week? What about if we just want to abolish a bad habit altogether, like eliminating the biscuit from the side of our brews? Well there’s two things that can help us.
- Habit stacking
- Future mindset
Habit stacking is the term we give to using a pre-existing habit to manufacture a new one. Essentially, we use the old habit to give the new habit a bit of a piggy-back into our lives, we sort of hatch it like a cuckoo in the nest of the old habit. For example, if you want to increase the amount of water you drink, you might say that every time you wait for the kettle to boil for your tea, you down a pint of water. If it’s getting more movement in, you might say every time you brush your teeth, that you’ll do 10 bodyweight squats in the bathroom. Eventually these habits just become part of the normal ritual.
Future mindset is about association between habits and people we aspire to be. So if you’re trying to be a fitter and healthier version of yourself, you might say “Fit and healthy people go to the gym four days a week before work.” When you’re struggling to get out of bed in the morning, you imagine what a fit and healthy person does, you imagine what the fit and healthy version of YOURSELF does and you re-inact that. It can still be challenging, but “pretending” to be something you’re not, can actually help you in the form of method acting, whereby soon enough, you actually become that fit and healthy person you were trying to become!
Ultimately, this is about planning and reflection, as always. It’s important to first recognise the habits which don’t add up to success for you and the ones that could make the positive changes for you. It’s important to sit down and take time to think about which habits need changing and exactly what messages you need to give to yourself, what cues you can employ, which bits of your brain you can “hack” to rewire and reprogram yourself. It will take time. It will take effort. But if you consistently try, reflect, plan, you will succeed.
And remember above all, that habits are what make us successful – it’s not the big things in life that are important, it’s the little moments and the little steps we take.