Habits determine and subconsciously control countless decisions in our day-to-day lives. From smoking a cigarette to simply brushing one's teeth, we are all at times unconditionally subservient to our own habits, many of which can be negative. Luckily, there is a science behind this. Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life analyzes the 3 step process that constructs a habit and explores how this can certainly be broken.
To begin with, a habit is embodied by a psychological pattern Duhigg refers to as the “habit loop.” This breaks down into a threefold system. The first step is the cue. This is essentially the trigger that provokes the habitual behavior. Cues enable your mind to go into a subconscious state and fulfill the actions as followed. Additionally, the routine happens next. This is the behavior in and of itself. And finally, the reward is last. The reward provides a sensation of pleasure that stimulates the desire to execute the action repeatedly.
Neurologists found that this type of behavior is spurred from a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Although decisions are developed in the prefrontal cortex, as a specific decision occurs more consistently a cue is instilled in the brain with a behavior for the intentions of the reward. And intrinsically, the basal ganglia takes over. This allows the decision-making part of your brain to shut down while the basal ganglia, or pattern-recognizing part of the brain, puts you on autopilot. This also allows us to multitask and devote more mental attention to a variety of additional undertakings.
Nonetheless, the basic foundation for breaking a habit is to discern what each of the factors on your habit loop are; particularly the reward. In other words, start with questioning what drives this behavior, then dive into how this behavior is initiated if you are still struggling to rid yourself from the habit. From there you will be able to understand what you are truly craving and find a more beneficial technique to accomplish that want. However, diagnosing what this variable is can be vastly difficult.
For example, I have a horrible habit of stopping in the middle of completing homework to start snacking and watching Netflix. This has lead me to do homework elsewhere, like coffee shops and the library. Unfortunately, this hasn’t fixed much since I always carry headphones and Netflix is on my phone and laptop 24/7. If anything, this has just encouraged me to spend more money on coffee. So to figure out what exactly my reward or reasoning for being so disgustingly lazy I had to do a bit of “experimenting” as Duhigg puts it.
By isolating and changing the reward element associated with the behavior I can test what I am actually desiring. It seems like this would be an easy reward to recall. I mean who doesn’t like a salty snack and a good Netflix binge? Nevertheless, knowing the exact reward is exceedingly crucial to breaking a habit. Thus, testing all the possible outlets for compensation is vital. In particular, referencing back to my Netflix and (literally) chill problem, whenever I felt the urge to sit on the couch and watch Friends I replaced it with other activities such as eating healthier snacks to cure hunger, salty snacks to test if it was merely an unhealthy craving, checking my phone to see if it was solely to get my mind off of schoolwork, and taking a walk to see if this was altogether a way to feel as if I was completely unconnected from responsibilities. Surprisingly, I felt more at ease to go back to work and less of an impulse to turn on the TV after checking my phone and walking around than eating whatsoever.
Ultimately, this showed me that any poor habit can be amended and replaced with a more positive resolution. And overall, habits are not as stressful and powerful as we let them be. So long as we make a commitment to understanding them, they aren’t as burdensome as we think.
