How to break negative habits and form positive new habits with success.
As the year comes to an end and a new year is on the horizon, many of you might be feeling motivated to make changes in your life. Perhaps break negative habits or add positive healthy habits to your life.
New Year often feels like a fresh start, and you start with high hopes that you will be successful this time, but unless you set yourself up for success by doing a little pre-work ahead of time, you may feel demoralized not being able to achieve your goal.
A habit can come in many forms. You may be eating unhealthily, want to increase your exercise, or perhaps reduce your drinking, but don’t forget the other internal habits, such as talking unkindly to yourself or not being able to say no when you want to. Habits come in many forms.
How habits form
So, let’s take a look at how we form habits.
It’s all about how our brains are hard-wired to work, and everyone is the same.
If you are one of those people who think that they haven’t got willpower or aren’t strong enough to break a habit, I can tell you that isn’t the case, and with some careful preparation, support, and internal motivation, you can be successful.
If we repeatedly do a habit and get a reward for doing it, our brains (yes, again, everyone’s brains) are hard-wired to keep doing that habit on autopilot. Remember Pavlov’s dogs? We are no different.
A habit – a negative or positive one, is structured the same way:
- There is a trigger
- The behavior or habit occurs.
- There is a reward or positive outcome as a result of the behavior.
For example, you have made dinner at the end of your busy day and sat down to watch a show and relax. You reach for a bag of chips and start munching, and you begin to relax and feel the sense of calm you are craving. The next night you do the same and so on. Your brain soon starts to associate that bag of chips with helping you feel calm and relaxed, and then the habit of eating a bag of chips after dinner on the coach is formed, and it’s very difficult to break.
Tips to break negative habits.
Taking some time to look at your negative habits and understand what triggers are in place that led you to crave the reward that the habit is giving you, is invaluable. Then consciously discovering what that reward is and how else you get it without using the habit you want to stop, can help you reach your goal.
This takes a little work but will set you up for success.
If you stop focusing on the behavior or habit and start looking at the two other parts – the trigger and the reward, it will be much easier to get the results you want.
Examine the trigger for the negative habit
You can take a look at the trigger using the who, what, when, where and why approach:
Who – Is there a person around you who is urging you to do the behavior? Perhaps taking to a particular person or group of people leaves you feeling that you want to have a glass of wine to unwind or leads you to doubt your self-worth.
What – Is there something physical in your space that urges you to do the habit. Perhaps having the chips in the cupboard and the bottle of wine is out on the countertop.
When – Is there a time of day that you are doing the habit, the after-dinner wind down perhaps?
Where – Is it a specific place in the house triggering the habit? Sitting on the couch at night. Have you noticed that we don’t do the same habits when we are on vacation?
Why – Do you have any internal feelings around the need to do the habit? Perhaps you feel anxious, bored or even a positive emotion wanting to celebrate a win from the day.
Of course, there may be multiple triggers for the same habit.
Becoming mindfully aware of the habit
Before you start to change the habit gaining this awareness around the trigger is very powerful in helping you understand why it is happening and set you up for success.
Don’t skimp on doing this step. Spend as long as you need in contemplation.
Paying attention to the reward
Now let’s focus on the reward you are getting by doing the habit. There are many things this could be. Perhaps you want to feel relaxed or calm. Maybe it’s more of a celebration; it’s Friday, we got through the week, let’s have a glass of wine!
A client of mine identified that when she tells herself the story that she is not good enough to do something (the habit), she can give herself the excuse to not step out of her comfort zone and therefore feels less anxious (the reward). But she wants to change this because she is holding herself back by not allowing herself to grow.
Once you have identified the reward, can you think of another way to reward yourself?
Going back to my example of the bag of chips after dinner each night to feel relaxed, could you change up your routine and have a relaxing bath instead?
What ideas do you have?
Establishing new positive habits
We have looked at how to set yourself up for success in breaking negative habits; you can use the same principles to form new positive ones.
What is it you want to add? Going to the gym, eating healthier foods, it could be a variety of things.
We talked about this framework before when breaking negative habits, but you can also set yourself up for success by adding triggers for positive habits.
- Do the new habit at the same time every day.
- Put your workout clothes out where they are easy to put on.
- Stack the habit onto something you already do regularly for example, take the new supplements you want to take regularly after brushing your teeth in the morning.
- Give yourself an immediate reward. You know that doing the new positive behaviour will bring great results in time but starting right away by associating something pleasurable with the new activity will reinforce the habit quickly. If you are going to the gym, do your workout and then spend some time in the sauna or use a delicious smelling new shampoo in the shower after. Make the new habit pleasurable from the start, so your mind starts to make positive associations.
I delve a little deeper into this with my post Six easy steps to make your goals achievable.
Let’s talk about how I can support you in reaching your goals in 2022! Happy New Year!
