We Don’t Tend to Talk About Our Good Habits
When most of us think and talk about habits, we are almost always referring to the bad ones. You are not likely to say, “I have a habit of brushing my teeth before I go to bed.” But you might say, “I have to kick my smoking habit,” or “I have developed the habit of stopping for a donut on my way home from work.” So, the word “habit” gets a bad rap, but really, most functional human beings have many more good or neutral habits than bad ones.
There is also a lot of bad information floating around about habit formation. Have you heard of the 21-90 rule? The rule is simple enough: Commit to a personal or professional goal for 21 straight days. After three weeks, the pursuit of that goal should have become a habit.
Once you’ve established that habit, you continue to do it for another ninety days, and you have a full-fledged lifestyle change. The biggest problem with that rule is the assumption that all habits are equal and take the same amount of time to internalize. That’s ridiculous!
Consider the difference between deciding to eat some fruit at the end of every meal and deciding to run around the block every day before dinner. The run will take much longer to become habitual for reasons which will become clear when we look at the science of habit. And the biggest problem is that when the run does not become a habit in 21 days, it is easy to believe that it is an unachievable goal, causing a negative feedback loop that is extremely destructive to the development of healthy habits.
The truth is, creating healthy habits is something you can accomplish if you approach it correctly and keep at it. Fortunately, many behavioral scientists and psychologists have been looking at habit formation for the past 20 years, bringing clarity to the science of habit formation and habit change.
Once you understand how habit formation works, you might find adding healthy habits to your daily routine easier than you previously imagined.
Starting small and stacking habits suddenly makes previously colossal goals, like “losing weight” or “reducing my cholesterol,” seem much more attainable.
The Science of Habit
All habits can be broken down into the same four parts: Cue, Craving, Response and Reward. These four parts, taken in order, describe how habits work, how they are formed and how they can be changed.
Cue, Craving, Response, Reward
Let’s say you walk past a donut shop on your way home from work, and usually you stop in and buy a donut. Your cue is passing the donut shop. The cue could come from simply seeing the shop or from smelling fresh hot donuts, or both.
That cue triggers a craving for a donut, and that craving initiates your response – you stop and purchase the donut. Once you eat the donut you get your reward. Donuts are made up of carbohydrates, which release the “happy” hormone, dopamine, in your brain. They are also full of fat, which also triggers the release of dopamine. The dopamine parties in your brain every time you eat that donut, reinforcing your donut habit.
Without that dopamine reward, the cue (the donut shop) would not trigger a craving. With no craving, there would be no response (buying and eating the donut) and thus no habit formation.
It is easy to see how the release of dopamine from the donut can result in a serious donut habit. But how might you break that habit? Let’s look back at the four components of habit.
In this case, the easiest way is to avoid the cue altogether. This would mean changing your route so that you don’t pass the donut shop. But suppose that is not possible? The cue will always create a craving, so suppose you change the response to that craving? This will take more effort but may ultimately be more effective since you can’t avoid donut shops forever.
Maybe the donut shop was initially appealing because in the late afternoon or early evening, on your way home from work, your energy was flagging. Suppose you purchased a coffee from the donut shop instead of a donut, thus changing your response. Initially, this would likely take a bit of willpower. However, the stimulant in the coffee coupled with your first triumph over your donut craving, could set up a new response-reward situation.
The positive feeling elicited by that one triumph should not be underestimated. The latest research on habit formation shows that each of those triumphs changes your self-perception. As you begin to see yourself as a person dedicated to a healthier lifestyle, each skip of the donut reinforces that self-perception. That positive reinforcement also releases dopamine in your brain, becoming its own reward.
Now suppose instead of swapping the donut for coffee, you decide to go to the store across the street and buy some blueberries. Blueberries are full of sugar (the natural, unrefined kind), which will also give you a dopamine rush. And in this case, your positive reinforcement is much stronger.
Why? Because you triumphed over your craving and flexed your healthy lifestyle muscles, opting for a snack full of nutrients and fiber. Behaving like a healthy person, and consistently getting a dopamine hit for being healthy, can become as addictive as any other source of dopamine.
Let’s go back to the fruit after dinner versus the run before dinner example. Now that you understand the four parts of habit formation, it is clear why one of these habits is easier to adopt than the other. The fruit after dinner habit has a clear cue, but the run around the block does not.
The cue for eating the fruit is the end of the main meal, when craving for dessert, or just a bit of something sweet, hits. Within a couple of weeks of adding fruit to the end of your evening meal, you’ll start reaching for your favorite piece of fruit without thinking. The run before dinner is more problematic, because in deciding to run around the block before dinner, you haven’t identified a cue. Without the cue, it is very hard to establish a new habit.
Habit Change – In Baby Steps
There is another concept critical to creating healthier habits, which is the subject of two terrific books, Tiny Habits, by BJ Fogg and Atomic Habits, by James Clear. In order to achieve lasting habit change, you need to take baby steps.
Lots of baby steps yield huge and lasting results, while taking too big a leap can easily cause you to stumble, blocking your path to progress.
Let’s return to the donut situation – Can you see how changing the donut habit can be a tiny part of a larger goal? Eliminating a daily donut is one small step toward being a healthy person, especially if you substitute it for a cup of blueberries.
Think about it this way: A donut contains between 190 and 500 calories. For argument’s sake let’s use the midpoint, 350 calories, for this calculation. In order to lose one pound, you need to reduce your food intake or increase your calorie burn by 3500. That means without making any other changes, you could lose one pound of weight for every ten donuts you eliminate from your diet. That could be as much as 35 pounds a year from one small habit change.
Baby steps, or tiny habit changes, can not only lead to more and bigger changes, but they also help you avoid failure. Many people make a New Year’s resolution to eliminate refined sugar or processed foods in the interest of their health. That is a Herculean task!
Refined sugars and processed foods are a constant presence in the modern diet. Trying to change the way you shop, cook, and socialize overnight is a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, breaking down your current diet into a series of tiny habits, identifying their cues, cravings, responses, and rewards and tackling one at a time is a roadmap for truly successful lifestyle changes.
When you break down big goals into tiny habit changes, you are making changes that James Clear calls “stackable.” You can make a new healthy habit the cue for your next new habit.
For example, eating fruit at the end of your evening meal gives you the self-perception that you are a healthy person. Feeling like you are a healthy person can be the cue to another healthy habit, like swapping sugary cereal for eggs or another protein for breakfast. Once you have stacked a few healthy eating habits together, the rewards get bigger because you will really start to see results.
Starting small and stacking habits suddenly makes previously colossal goals, like “losing weight” or “reducing my cholesterol,” seem much more attainable.
Best Practices You Will Learn in the Amaze Habits Course
- How to set goals
- How to break those goals down
- How to identify cues and change responses
- How to stack new habits
- Why it is critical to celebrate small victories
- Best ways to track your progress
With this process, you’ll be amazed at your ability to make small habit changes that make big, positive changes to your health and well-being. The key is to do it your way, on your schedule so that it fits into your busy life.
