Day 92 - The Plan To Kick Those Habits For Good

About a month ago, I started sharing what I'd learned from reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business mostly while sitting in the airport on my way to an amazing Beachbody conference.  I wanted to finish up my findings here in this post (see Day 57 for part 1).  I'll be including quotes from the book along with my paraphrasing and my personal comments...

As a reminder, in part 1 of my little book review, I discussed how the core of the book is understanding the habit loop and then figuring out how to switch the routine.  "This process within our brains is a three step loop.  First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use.  Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional.  Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future."  So now that we understand why habits are actually neurological cravings, and we understand how habit creation occurs in a three-step process, we need to figure out how to change the bad ones that we don't want to participate in any longer.

"Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior is called awareness training...it's the first step in habit reversal training."  "We know that a habit cannot be eradicated - it must, instead, be replaced.  and we know that habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied:  If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted."

"Often, we don't really understand the cravings driving our behaviors until we look for them."


"But to overpower the habit, we must recognize which craving is driving the behavior." - Well, that seems simple, right?  I crave sweets.  Yes, but that's not the craving.  The craving is the REWARD that you get from the sweets.  Is it the taste?   Is it a social benefit?  Is it the feeling you get from comforting memories of your departed grandmother?  Is it feeling less bored?  Those are the rewards that you crave.  So when we figure out the true cravings, we can replace the routine, which will change the habit.

"To change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a NEW routine."

"But that's not enough.  For a habit to stay changed, people must believe that change is possible.  And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group."  This is where Beachbody has helped me tremendously.  I still struggle, a LOT, with making healthier choices.  But the support of the other coaches and customers in our challenge groups helps me to stay stronger.  That's why I actually signed up with this company to be a "coach" instead of just to purchase something and do it on my own - I know that I need to be held more accountable.  And the support that I've received has been priceless.  If I didn't have them, I'd have probably gained another 30 pounds by now, ugh.

I've been trying to change some of my own bad habits, and at first, it feels pretty intimidating breaking it all down into cue, routine, and reward, but it really does get easier.

The trick has been to INTENTIONALLY PRACTICE the new routine several times - you cannot expect it to happen right away without repeatedly trying.  

"Only when your brain starts expecting the reward - craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment - will it become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning.  The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come."

As Duhigg moves to the ending of the book, he writes about a man names William James who
learned a great amount about habits and beliefs.  In speaking about William James:  "Later, he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change.  And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits.  Habits, he noted, are what allows us to 'do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all.'  Once we choose who we want to be, people grow 'to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper, or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds."

Wouldn't that be amazing to live that way, choosing who we want ourselves to be, and having those good habits already "creased?"

To make it happen, here's The Framework:
- Identify the routine
- Experiment with rewards
- Isolate the cue
- Have a plan