Our habits make or break us. They represent our patterns of behaviour - which with intentional recognition and effort we can curb to align with different goals we have and achieve the outcomes we hope for.
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This topic explores how habits form and what aspects within the habit forming cycle we can leverage to build the habits we want to build (or replace).
Some of the topics covered include:
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What are Habits
Having an awareness of how habits they form provides a tool for constructing new beneficial behaviours and breaking redundant old ones.
Duhigg in his book "Habits" describes habits forming through a three-step loop process that functions to create ‘sticky’ habits. First there is a cue or trigger that tells your brain which automatic mode and habit to draw upon, followed by a routine action or response and lastly a reward which makes the brain associate the original trigger with the reward and creates a compulsion to repeat the action when that trigger presents itself again.
The way habits form can be related to the activity of the brain neurons which control our behavious - 'neurons that fire together wire together’. This highlights the way the brain creates strong associations between triggers, actions and rewards. This behaviour is rooted in survival and made it easier to remember environmental stimuli associated with particular rewards to allow us to better recognise and respond to those stimuli in the future.
An awareness of how habits form can however be used as a way of re-wiring existing habits and associating different rewards with triggers that occur. For example, if tension acts as a trigger and the response associated with that trigger is to avoid social situations (picking one relevant to me here) and the reward is a relaxation of tension; then different behaviours can be intentionally practiced to determine which other behaviours can be practiced that result in the same reward (release of tension) but still enable you to engage positively within social situations.
However, each habit is associated with a unique set of triggers, emotional attachments and associated with past events of varying strength and egoic attachment. This can make changing habits difficult.
Duhigg in his book "Habits" describes habits forming through a three-step loop process that functions to create ‘sticky’ habits. First there is a cue or trigger that tells your brain which automatic mode and habit to draw upon, followed by a routine action or response and lastly a reward which makes the brain associate the original trigger with the reward and creates a compulsion to repeat the action when that trigger presents itself again.
The way habits form can be related to the activity of the brain neurons which control our behavious - 'neurons that fire together wire together’. This highlights the way the brain creates strong associations between triggers, actions and rewards. This behaviour is rooted in survival and made it easier to remember environmental stimuli associated with particular rewards to allow us to better recognise and respond to those stimuli in the future.
An awareness of how habits form can however be used as a way of re-wiring existing habits and associating different rewards with triggers that occur. For example, if tension acts as a trigger and the response associated with that trigger is to avoid social situations (picking one relevant to me here) and the reward is a relaxation of tension; then different behaviours can be intentionally practiced to determine which other behaviours can be practiced that result in the same reward (release of tension) but still enable you to engage positively within social situations.
However, each habit is associated with a unique set of triggers, emotional attachments and associated with past events of varying strength and egoic attachment. This can make changing habits difficult.