People do a lot of things daily. Some psychologists say that almost half of the things we do every day are habits. Habits help people save their energy so they can do things easily, even when things get complicated. But not all habits are good. Some habits produce positive outcomes, some habits negatively affect our well-being. Getting to know about habits is therefore essential for personal growth and behavioural change.
Habits and Habit Loop
A habit is something acquired; we do it repeatedly, so that it becomes easy and we do not even think about it. It is like our body does it on its own and requires less cognitive effort. For example, when we are feeling stressed, we start using our mobile phone or eating a snack. Over time, these repeated behaviours strengthen the neural pathways in our brain, which makes actions faster and easier to perform. The habit loop explains how habits are formed. It was told by Duhigg in 2012. This idea says that habits happen in three steps:
- Cue: Something that triggers a behaviour
- Routine: The behaviour itself
- Reward: The positive outcome that reinforces the behaviour
Research shows that a part of the brain called the ganglia is very important for storing the things we do over and over again, like habits. The study by Graybiel in 2008 supports this idea about the brain and habits.
Read More: Cultivating Mindful Eating Habits in the Digital Age
How Habits Are Formed?
Habits are formed when we do something repeatedly. At first, we do things on purpose. After a while, our brain starts to do things automatically. For example, when you are learning to drive a car, you have to think about everything. You have to think about the road and the cars around you, and the pedals and the steering wheel. After you have been driving for a while, you can just drive without thinking about all of those things. This is how habits are formed.
Research by Lally and his team in the year 2010 found that forming habits takes 66 days for something to become a habit. This concept has also been spoken of in the book “The 5 AM Club” by Robin Sharma. This can be different for each person. When we do things again and again, it makes the connections in our brain stronger. This is because of the neuroplasticity of the brain. When a behaviour gets a result, dopamine helps to make connections in the brain, for that behaviour to become stronger. After that, the brain starts to think about the result as soon as it sees the thing. That is why we feel like doing something and stopping them can feel bad or make us feel stressed.
Why Bad Habits Are Harder to Break?
Our brain likes to do things that are easy and do not take a lot of thought. So when we try to stop doing a habit, our brain can get confused. It takes time. It takes practice to break a habit. Habits do not just disappear; they get replaced by others. Some people who study this say that when we do something over and over, it makes a path in our brain, and that path is still there even if we stop doing it. This is according to people like Wood and Rünger, who wrote about it in 2016. So when we are stressed or really tired, we often go back to our habits.
Read More: How to Break a Bad Habit?
How Habits Can Be Broken?
Awareness is the key to changing them. The habits are like a loop. It has a start, a middle and an end. If you do not understand the habit loop, it is hard to make a change that actually works. People can use self-monitoring techniques like journaling. This helps us track patterns and triggers. Research on changing behaviour says that when people are more aware of what they do, they can stop doing things without thinking and start doing things on purpose. For example, research by Prochaska and DiClemente in 1983 found this to be true about self-monitoring techniques and behaviour change.
When we want to break a habit, one thing that really works is to substitute it with another one. We do not have to stop the habit; we just replace the thing we do every time with something else. For example, if a person smokes when he is stressed because it helps him to relax, instead, he can try something like breathing or grounding. Habit substitution is a way to break habits like smoking.
Duhigg from the year 2012 says that “the thing that triggers a habit and the thing that makes us happy about it are really hard to change”. Sometimes it is easy to replace habits instead of trying to get rid of them completely. Duhigg says we should try to make a new circle instead of breaking the old one. This way, people can make a change that will really stick with the habit loop.
Read More: Building Habits That Stick: A Deep Dive Into The Psychology
The Role of Environment and Social Support
Habits are affected by the environment and the people around us. If we change the things around us, like getting rid of junk food or using notes to remind us to do things, it can really help us change our habits. The things around us can influence our habits. Changing them can help us make better choices, like the researchers Wood and others found out in 2005.
Social support is very important. When people encourage us, it helps us stay motivated and keep going. We are also more likely to reach our goals when we work together with others. Studies have found that people are more successful at changing their habits when they have friends or a social network to support them, like the study by Kelly and Barker in 2016.
Patience, Relapse, and Self-Compassion
Changing habits is not always a straight line. People often go back to their habits, and that is okay. It does not mean they have failed at habit change. When people try to change their behavior they should be kind to themselves. Research on habit change shows that being kind to ourselves is important when we are trying to change our behaviour. People need to be gentle with themselves during habit change. Habit change is something that takes time. People should not give up on habit change.
Changing your habits is something that happens over time. It is not something you do one day. When you think of changing your habits, you can learn from the times you mess up. You can make your plan better. As time goes on, you can start to do things and stop doing old things. Even if you still do some of the things sometimes, the new things can become what you do most of the time.
Read More: Simple Self-Care Habits That Boost Your Mental Health
Conclusion
Habits have an impact on the way people behave. People do things without paying attention to them because that is what they always do. When people do something, and if it makes them happy, they want to do it repeatedly. This is how habits get stuck in our brains. If people understand why they do things, they can try to make a change. Habits shape our behavior than the decisions that people make on purpose. Being aware of how habits work, people can lead a better life.
References +
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Tice, D. M. (2007). The strength model of self-control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(6), 351–355. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467- 8721.2007.00534.x
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House.
Graybiel, A. M. (2008). Habits, rituals, and the evaluative brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 31, 359–387. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.112851
Kelly, M. P., & Barker, M. (2016). Why is changing health-related behaviour so difficult? Public Health, 136, 109–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2016.03.030
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed? European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
Lally, P., & Gardner, B. (2013). Promoting habit formation. Health Psychology Review, 7(S1), S137–S158. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2011.603640
Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualisation of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032
Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1281–1297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1281
Wood, W., & Rünger, D. (2016). Psychology of habit. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 289– 314. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417
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