BigThink: Habits change your life. Here’s how to change your habits

“Habits are automatic behaviors. Instead of requiring intention, they occur in response to environmental cues like time of day or location. Essentially, your brain forms an association between a specific context and specific behavior. You then execute that behavior — the ritual or habit — in that context without even thinking about it.

The habits we build end up structuring our everyday lives, often without us even noticing. Dr. Wood’s research finds that around 40% of our daily behaviors are habits. That’s why it’s worth taking a close look at what habits are, and whether they’re having a negative or positive effect on our lives. The best way to change a habit is to replace it with a new one. This means you must complete a new behavior in a given context, get a reward, and repeat. Forming new habits is challenging because of what psychologists call “friction”—the barriers that get in the way of completing a behavior, like distance, time, and effort. One of the best ways to overcome friction is to create an environment that makes the new behavior easy and rewarding. The new environment ideally will reduce old cues that led to bad habits, and increase cues that lead to helpful new habits.

This is where your planning and thinking come into play. If going to the gym is a hassle or you just don’t like it, find an at-home exercise routine you actually enjoy and leave your exercise clothes and equipment out in a convenient, obvious spot. If you want to start reading before bed instead of checking your phone, consider charging your phone overnight in a spot out of reach from your bed, and find yourself a book you just can’t put down.

Using habits wisely can substantially improve your life. In addition to helping you reach your goals, habits can provide a sense of structure, control, and even meaning to your life. Many professional athletes, for example, gain a sense of confidence and control when they perform specific rituals before or during games. Other people might have family traditions or routines that provide meaning. But even banal habits can be helpful. Because habits take so little brainpower, they can also free up your mind for other things, like thinking about your important life goals or calling your mom on your drive home. “When we’ve practiced on things enough that we don’t have to think about it, then we can do other things,” Dr. Wood told Big Think. “We can make sense out of our world.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Habits are rarely changed by knowledge, planning, or willpower alone
• The habits people build end up structuring their everyday lives, often without them noticing.
• When people recognize a bad habit, they often try to change it through willpower alone — but that rarely works.“

Read the whole article here.

#Habits #Well-being #Health

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