Habits change our lives. So how to change habits?

It has been more than 30 years since 1989 when Stephen Covey published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Since then there have been many more discoveries about habits from the neurosciences, psychology and behavior. These studies enter the daily lives and language of many Americans and Western countries through books, newspapers and popular media channels such as podcasts or YouTube.

If you want to start reading more books, exercising, learning a programming language, or a new foreign language…, and have failed (like most people), then this article is for you.

Or, life opens up to changes and you have new roles. For example: becoming a mother, having a new job, going to college, being diagnosed with a chronic illness, etc. At that time, many old habits are no longer suitable, and you want to form new habits. The ideas below may be helpful to you.

Habits help us live freely in life

Our brains are always looking for ways to save effort. Therefore, it forms a mechanism called habit. Habits are behaviors – including actions, words and ways of thinking – that are repeated and occur almost automatically. If willpower helps you decide to change something, habits will help you do it with the least amount of effort. When you know how to design habits, you will live the life of your dreams little by little every day. Because every habit – from the simplest to the most complex – has the same nature and the same way it works.

Knowing how to design habits will help you cope better when difficult times strike. It’s just like when you already have an illness, starting to exercise will be more difficult than if you started exercising while you’re still healthy.

Habits happen automatically when there are signs

Cues are responsible for signaling our brain so it is ready to perform a behavior. The sign can be a time, a place, a person, or a scent.

The brain structure important to habit is the basal ganglia. Like the engine system and the lubricating grease layer of a motorbike, the basal ganglia and dopamine - a neurotransmitter in the subcortical area help all your activities run smoothly. People whose basal ganglia are damaged by injury or disease often experience neurological paralysis and movement disorders.

The basal ganglia and subcortical regions play a role in the development of emotions and implicit memory. Practical skills such as riding a bike, playing the piano, playing basketball, or emotional experiences such as recalling a happy memory from the past are a form of implicit memory. Habit is also a form of implicit memory. Meanwhile, rational decisions (e.g., starting a new habit) take place in other areas of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex. But as soon as the habit falls into place, this decision-making activity returns to its resting state because it is no longer necessary. At this time, the basal ganglia will help the habit operate automatically. For complex actions, this process will happen over and over for each small step. For example, a soccer player needs to practice kicking many times and each kicking technique consists of many individual foot movements, and must be practiced step by step to be able to combine them skillfully. The same applies to complex cognitive skills such as reading or writing.

Just knowing is not enough to form a habit

It is rare that habits can be changed with mere understanding, planning, or determination. That’s because there is a distinction between two types of memory: implicit memory and explicit memory. Habits are a form of implicit memory and are stored in subcortical areas such as the basal ganglia. Meanwhile, knowledge or understanding is located in areas such as the temporal cortex and planning takes place in the prefrontal cortex.

EP is an example of the above distinction. He suffered damage to most of the cortical areas in charge of memory. When asked “Where is your house?” he replied “I don’t know!”, but immediately after that, he continued walking and entered his own house. One special thing is, there were days when he had difficulty. It’s on rainy or snowy days and everything around becomes different: the sights, the smells, the colors, the roads. Those are the signs that are in EP’s implicit memory - the memory area of habit. Although he cannot consciously remember where his home is, he can rely on the automatic part of the routine to get home. And the signs on the way home are a great help to the automaticity of EP’s routine. When the signs didn’t come, he couldn’t find his way home.

Thus, knowing you need to read a book and having the habit of picking up a book are two very different things and are controlled by different parts of the brain.

Habits are formed when we reward them

An important evolutionary mechanism of the brain is craving. In the past, we needed to have cravings to be motivated to hunt when we were hungry or find water when we were thirsty. Loss of this craving can reduce an individual’s ability to survive in the wild. In modern life, we have many ways to achieve basic physical and mental survival needs. Some ways are more useful than others. Another characteristic of the brain is that it will prioritize and remember ways to meet needs that bring immediate satisfaction instead of having to wait. In other words, instinct can cause us to fall into the trap of being satisfied but having to suffer the consequences in the future. Eating a large chocolate cake satisfies the need to eat and store energy, the reward is immediate. The brain immediately remembers this reward and creates a craving association with that feeling. It will look forward to the next cake. This feeling of craving is the mechanism of habit formation.

Find rewards for good habits

Why do we do this and not that? The answer is: We have needs that need to be satisfied and we act to relieve those needs. It can be a physical or mental need, such as:

• Store energy: eat more than you need
• Connect with others: play facebook
• Being recognized, being part of a group: drinking beer
• Express yourself: use branded items
• Reduce anxiety: smoking, reading news
• Recognized: gaming

There are different ways to achieve the same need. The trick is to find ways that are more beneficial to us in the long run and gradually eliminate ways that are harmful (even though they may seem to help us feel better in the short term). For example, to reduce anxiety, we often read online newspapers (which contain more negative and useless things than useful things, unless we know how to choose, but choosing is very ‘brain-consuming’. ). But if we read books about topics we are interested in, we will have more profound and reliable knowledge. Our ability to identify quality information will increase after a period of reading books on that topic. We are confident and less anxious. Our brains, after a period of ‘training’, begin to like the positive feelings that reading brings. Gradually, it reminds us to read books. We no longer have to force ourselves to read books anymore. Reading has become a habit. When we spend a lot of time reading books in our free time, we also don’t have much time to read things of less value. That’s the habit loop.

Bad habits are like darkness, you cannot fight them directly. Instead, turn on the light and the darkness will disappear on its own.

How to change habits?

So we know how habits work. This section will walk you through four steps to change any habit you want, with an example. You can use these four steps to break a bad habit, add a good habit, or usually both. The best way to break a bad habit is to replace it with a good habit. From one good habit, you create another good habit, and so on. You are the architect of your own life in this simple way.

Step 1. Identify habit loops

Habits operate in a loop consisting of three components: cue, action, and reward. The more regularly and continuously this loop is performed, the more naturally the action will occur. Identifying the three elements of the habit loop is the first step in creating a habit. The next step is to change that loop.

For example: I used to have the habit of eating instant noodles when doing research reports late at night. Thus, my routine loop is as follows:

• Signs: Late at night, computer, doing research reports, hungry, sleepy, having instant noodles in the kitchen,…
• Action: Eat instant noodles
• Reward: Feeling relaxed, full, distracted from work for a while,…

Step 2. What reward do I need?

Next, I will experiment to see what makes me crave instant noodles. Let’s say, I guess I want to relax so I eat noodles. So, if instead of eating noodles at 11am while reading research, I try going out on the porch to get some relaxation from the fresh air. If I still want to eat noodles afterward, it’s probably not that I need to relax. Similarly, I continued to try other hypotheses sequentially: listening to a piece of music (distraction), texting with a friend who was awake (chatting, communicating), having a snack at 10 o’clock ( hungry) etc. Through these experiments, I discovered that what I really needed when eating noodles was to satisfy my hunger.

Step 3. What are the signs?

After a period of observation and elimination, I discovered that the biggest factor that prompted me to eat noodles was the previous continuous reading activity that made me lose energy and quickly feel hungry. When I’m tired and hungry, I have another urge to go eat a bowl of hot noodles. And this usually happens around 11-12 o’clock at night. Thus, an important sign here is reading continuously on the computer at night. Another sign is: having instant noodles in the house.

Step 4. Change plan

Once I know the rewards and signs of habits that need changing, I write the following action plan:

On days when I have to do research reports, around 10 p.m., I will keep healthy snacks ready to eat in between reading breaks. I also don’t store pre-packaged noodles in the house. I set a timer – every hour or so I will get up and go out on the porch to breathe and relax with some healthy snacks.

With this plan, I gradually no longer feel like eating instant noodles when I have to do research reports late at night. Gradually, I stopped staying up late and had healthier work habits following the steps above.

Conclude

Habits help us spread our wings to freely fly through life. To adapt to life, there is nothing more than the ability to continuously design for yourself good habits. Darkness can only be dispelled when light shines on it. Create your own light from the candlelight of good habits. To change, we don’t need a will as high as a mountain. What we need is understanding, creativity and a lot of practice. May you become a better version of yourself every day, starting with habits.