Habits and what they are.
I bet everyone
is familiar with a feeling of doing something automatically in our everyday
life. Then there is a wake-up call and we realize that we didn’t even think of
doing it but we did it anyway. No power wasted, pure instruction set run by one
of deepest and oldest part of our brain. It could be nail biting, playing with
hair, snacking late at night or even avoiding eye contact (didn’t seem like a
habit at all) and many more. In fact almost everything can become a habit. Now
guess what, also everything that a habit can be
“dehabitized”. Habits are neutral, it’s just a mechanism, but they can cause
pretty much damage (like gambling). They are also used by world champions (like
Michael Phelps) and super big companies (like Target) to make a change. Habits
affecting your life extremely are called keystone habits. The keystone habit is a game-changer, so by disarming
or developing it we can end up being completely another person. Let’s dive into
the topic.
The main
difference between a habit and a behavior is that the first one is simply the
latter but repeated regularly. It’s worth pointing out
that the habit occurs subconsciously, as I mentioned at the beginning, so we do things we didn’t consciously ask about our
brain to do. All habits can be broken down into a three-step process:
- Habits are triggered by cues
- Cues lead to a routine
- Routine finally culminates in reward
Intuitively
then, when you recognize a bad habit you can avoid the cue it’s triggered by.
Likewise, if you identify the good guy, you can build its cue. Obviously, our
lives are awesome and bad habits develop magically by themselves but it’s way harder or
it borders on with impossible to build a single useful one.
It’s quite
interesting what happens in our brains when a habit
is triggered. When we are exposed to the cue,
our brain figures out it’s time to run a
specific routine. If it works well , we get a reward and our brain gets certain amount of
dopamine. That habit is a young one. If we take a look at the old-timer, which
has been a while in our brain, we can see that the dopamine surge happens just
right after we have an encounter with the cue. To simplify, let’s take a look at a smoking habit. When you start smoking, you don’t feel so excited about going out and having
a cigarette. However, try to smoke for some time (no, don’t do it) and you will
feel pretty anxious about going out for a smoke during a break.
This whole
habit stuff wouldn’t be so significant if habits were not used by the big guys
in the world. Michael Phelps or rather his coach Bob Bowman believed that the
key to victory was creating right routines, so habits that would make Michael
the strongest swimmer. In 2008, in Beijing,
Michael Phelps established a new world record,
nobody knew his googles were filled and he couldn’t see anything. He made it,
because of his extraordinary training. Every day he was asked to plan every
possible situation in water, to imagine how he swims, jumps and
wins. This quickly became a routine that developed into a habit, a habit that
led him to the top.
Another big
case you should know is about is the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) - a
corporation that, for nearly a century, had manufactured everything from the
foil that wraps Hershey’s Kisses and the metal in Coca Cola cans to the bolts
that hold satellites together. Long story short, a new
executive of Alcoa, Paul O’Neill, decided to make Alcoa the safest company in
America. His approach was totally different from his predecessors, not a single
word about business, just safety. He declared that his plan is to make Alcoa
the safest company in America. Right after this announcement one of the
investors started calling his clients to sell their stock immediately. He admitted
a while after that it was literally the worst piece of advice he gave in his
entire career. O’Neill retired in 2000, after 13 years of his career in Alcoa, the
company’s annual net income was five times larger than before he arrived, and
its market capitalization had risen by $27 billion. By attacking one keystone
habit the whole organization has changed its way of functioning.
There are
lots of inspiring stories how people change their lives. Sometimes they make it
happen not being aware of such thing as a habit. I would love to introduce you
to all of them but then I would have to simply rewrite the book I read. If you
want to dig further and you feel like it’s worth your time, I suggest looking
up “The Power of Habit” or Charles Duhigg on the internet.
You are
welcome to share your precious thoughts and stories. All feedback is
appreciated.
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Sources I used to create this article:
Comments
By routine we are doing some stuff unconsciously and you're not sure what and how you were doing, but by making something a little bit different you're forcing yourself to pay attention and to remember it - for example close the doors with your left hand instead of right one - you won't worry if you did it.
Also, by making everything the same you're not developing your brain - this a muscle, so it have to be trained. My friend has read somewhere that you should go or drive one new way/road to stimulate your brain - generally do something different, not as usual or today. You can even turn left instead of right when you're walking your dog and it will be enough.
Back to the topic, I have some experience with building good habits. Like in your example with smoking, I decided to drink more water after having read an article about benefits of it. And it worked well. I drink about 2 liters a day, feel really good and can't imagine my life without so much water. So, I think that building habits are not as difficult as breaking bad ones. But I also heard many stories about people who gave up smoking easily. I still don't understand why some people can do it without any efforts, but other suffers.
They were using a well-chosen diet and professional advice from personal trainers. After getting the dream result, most of them
with a tilt back. Why? Because they ate back unhealthy things, which made the body accustomed to over the years. The example shows that changes first must be done mentally.