Habits part 1: Keeping habits as passengers.
There’s a quote about bad habits (usually credited to Warren Buffet):
"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."
And it’s (disturbingly) true.
Fortunately, good habits form and secure a framework around us with the same fervency. We simply don’t often focus on our good (or neutral) habits. Sometimes we don’t realize we have habitual patterns at all, good or bad! And this is when you are no longer driving your life but are, rather, merely a passenger, hopefully with a view.
While good habits (think waking at the same time each day, brushing your teeth, taking a proper break for lunch, getting in some movement, and reading your Bible daily) can ensure some form of healthy stability in the day, create a base level of productivity, and help with time management, if you don’t stay consciously aware of your routine daily activity, it’s extremely easy to go on autopilot with both the good and bad.
Only by the time you are actually riding in the backseat of your own life with the view best out the rearview, do you see the implications of your daily agenda. Even then, as with passing trees on a long road trip, the view often changes so subtly, it’s not until we wake from a nap or something drastic interferes with cruise control (like a detour, exotic sight, road block, or a storm) do we pay enough attention to notice the (by that time) more noticeable change in the surroundings from when we set out.
So it is with habits.
How habits form:
According to experts with Psychology Today, habits form when new behaviors become automatic and are enacted with minimum conscious awareness. That's because “the behavioral patterns we repeat most often are literally etched into our neural pathways.”
Neuroscientists have traced our habit-making behaviors to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia (which also plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition). Decisions, on the other hand, are made in a different part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. As soon as a behavior becomes automatic (habitual) the decision-making part of your brain goes into a sleep mode and becomes inactive.
Charles Duhogg, in his book titled The Power of Habit states:
"In fact, the brain starts working less and less. The brain can almost completely shut down. ... And this is a real advantage, because it means you have all of this mental activity you can devote to something else."
"You can do these complex behaviors without being mentally aware of it at all," he says. "And that's because of the capacity of our basal ganglia: to take a behavior and turn it into an automatic routine."
Every habit (good and bad) starts with a psychological pattern called a "habit loop," which is a three-part process.
First, there's a cue, or trigger, that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold.
Then there's the routine, which is the behavior itself; this is what we think about when we think about habits.
Lastly is the reward: something that your brain likes and creates a positive feedback (through release of neurotransmitters) that helps it remember the "habit loop" in the future.
Healthy and unhealthy habits are equally firmed through the same series of events in the “habit loop”. But Dr. Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, explains that there is a difference- a complicating element if you will- involved when pleasure or satisfaction is at play, that makes these habits so much harder to break,
Enjoyable behaviors can prompt your brain to release a chemical called dopamine. “If you do something over and over, and dopamine is there when you’re doing it, that strengthens the habit even more. When you’re not doing those things, dopamine creates the craving to do it again,” Poldrack says. So, in essence, if the bad habit is pleasurable, your brain might actually be working against you as you try to change course!
When this pleasure response is involved, an additional step enters the “habit loop”: craving. After the cue, a craving (or motivational desire) enters the cycle propelling us towards the routine phase with even more enthusiasm.
Normally we would, in general, think of motivational desires and the resulting routine to provide a positive dopamine feedback and, thus, a feeling of enjoyment, happiness, or reward. These feelings are considered “good” feelings, even if the behavior is damaging or bad.
Things get a bit complicated, however, if fear is involved. Anxiety over a potential outcome, and fears, irrespective of their rationality (we know that fears can actually be created through routine amygdala reactivity stimulated by conscious thoughts), can also create habits of avoidance. Though these don’t follow the more-simple “habit loop” pathway by offering a reward in the traditional sense, an achievement of sorts is acquired in the form of relief.
This three- (or four-) step process is not something that happens only intermittently, but rather it is an endless feedback loop that is running and active every single moment you are alive. (Yes, even now as you read!) The brain is constantly scanning the environment, predicting what will happen, trying out various responses, and learning from the results. The entire process completes in a split second, and our brain uses it again and again without ceasing.
Walking into a dark room you “instinctively” turn on a light switch. A ping comes from your phone and you pick it up and swipe upwards. Your neck was hurting so you rolled over. A pencil rolled off the desk- you reach down to pick it up. Time to go to work so you put on your shoes, generally first on the same foot each time.
The urges to act strike you without thinking, and you proceed through each of the phases of the “habit loop” without thinking and in a fraction of a second. After decades of mental programming, it becomes increasingly easy to automatically slip into patterns of thinking and acting.
How are habits changed or broken?
Going back to the passenger analogy and quote by Buffet- unless we are aware of our habits, both good and bad, it’s impossible to recognize when change is needed. As the passenger in your own life, being driven by habits that have become so automated years can pass on cruise control, the rearview perspective when you choose to look can often be a bit of a mess. Even looking out the side windows will reveal the ways your behaviors affect those around you and the current state of your health, happiness, social life, career life, family relations, etc..
I wrote about discernment in my blog titled “Are you seeing clearly”. Through my writing I explained how, when you’ve done something for a very long time, or isolation or societal standards have normalized your habitual behaviors through lack of healthy comparison, it can be difficult even to simply be aware that a habit needs to change.
I once said to someone: “If you decide to be brave, and have a look around at your life, I suggest you merely peek from behind the curtain at first, grab a friend’s hand, and get a therapist, cause… it’s gonna be a bit overwhelming when you really start to see for the first time in a while!”
But through mindful, purposeful, healthy comparison between your current life and the one you want to live, and the courage to really study the life products of your behaviors with intellectual humility and curiosity instead of criticism or condemnation, recognition of habits in the driver’s seat becomes a probable and realistic possibility.
Intentional = Connected
Change cannot happen without awareness. And awareness comes from connectedness. Habits are the very definition of dis-connectedness. Basic word math should have revealed to you the answer to the equation -> Connectedness is the opposite of Habit.
Awareness, therefore, is the first step. Becoming connected to your actions allows for analysis. The analysis can then engage your prefrontal cortex (captain of conscious decision making) to make an intentional game plan. And now you are driving your life again… fully aware and at the wheel.
This leads us into Part II on Habits: Backseat Habits and Tumbleweeds of Resolve.
