The science on how to change habits
The science on how to change habits
What Science Tells Us About How To Change Habits.
Changing a habit can take time, and persistence. Studies show it takes on average between 18 and 254 days for a new behaviour to become a habit! So here are some tips on how to change habits as quickly as possible and easily as possible!
There are many types of habits, here I am thinking about starting habits that we want, but can be hard to form into habits (such as exercising) and some that we find very difficult to stop, even though they may be unhealthy (such as chewing your nails, smoking)!
Once we have repeated a behaviour enough times it will become easy to do, it will become a habit. So we know we need to repeat the new habit or stop the old habit for long enough for the habit to form. Many habits are formed through this repetition, that is encouraged along the way by out own chemical reward system. In these cases the habit that starts with a cue (I’m in the queue at a shop buying a paper), then the behaviour is carried out (I chose a treat), and finally I get a reward (I get a hit of dopamine, a happy chemical as I eat the treat). It doesn’t take too many repetitions of this same pattern for the brain to link the cue to the desire for the reward, to start encouraging you to repeat the action every time. So understanding this, we can see how the following techniques will help:
One -Know Your Cues
Knowing your triggers can help you avoid them, or at least be able to think ahead of how you are going to implement tip 5!
Two -Use Life Changes to Start New Habits
Take the opportunity to change habits when you have other major changes happening (such as a new job, moving home). The old cues will be taken away, and you have the ideal situation to create new cues to trigger positive habits.
Three -Replace Bad Habits with Good Habits
In breaking a habit, we are actually changing from one habit to another. Think about how you could replace the old habit with something more positive. For example, rather than getting home and snacking in front of the telly, going to the gym on the way home.
Four -Create a Better Reward Than The Habit
This can range from rewarding yourself for the doing the new habit (pound in the jar for that special treat), to reminding yourself what a difference it will make to you when the new habit is stuck (eg quitting smoking means you will have more years to spend with your kids)
Five -Setting Clearer Goals
Rather than using negative goals (I will not eat a snack when I put the telly on), be clear about what you will be doing instead -what will your new habit be, and be specific -what, when, how and where.
Six- Lower your stress level
The structures in your brain that form the “intellectual mind” are like having a sensible mum in your own brain. They help us to resist the pull of the promised dopamine hit, and can implement the tips above. They can think and plan ahead, taking into account your long term well-being. However, when you feeling low or stressed then these brain structures get overridden by the structures in the “primitive mind”. The primitive mind is not innovative, it doesn’t think ahead, it wants to find that happy hit of dopamine now and creates the temptation to slip back to the old habit. Therefore, the calmer you are, the more the intellectual mind will support us to make changing habits easily.
