How Habits Happen

Did you make New Year’s resolutions? If you’re a regular reader, you know I am not a fan of resolutions, primarily because people often use resolutions to shame themselves for not being enough, which is seriously counterproductive.

I do, however, love habits - how habits are formed, why some stick and some don’t, the brain science behind habits. Love. It. All. Here’s a piece I wrote last year on habits.

Why do I love habits?

Habits help me evolve into my truest self. 

So, whatever you call your New Year’s planning/visioning/resolution making, here’s how to turn those plans into lasting habits. 

First, know this - You already have thousands of habits, which means you’re already successful. From which foot you step with first when you get out of bed, to how you brush your teeth at night, your life is full of habits. Think about your morning routine for a moment - it’s probably 90% habit.

When you do something, there’s a neural network in your brain that’s activated. The more often you do that thing, the stronger the network’s connection is, and your brain creates kind of a shorthand to automatically do the habit. You might notice this if you walk into the kitchen in the morning and the first thing you do is pour a cup of coffee (yep, me too), or pick up your phone and open the same app first in the morning. When a habit is deeply ingrained, the neural network created by that habit is also strong.

Second, habits follow a particular pattern. In his excellent book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg analyzes studies on habit formation, and also examples of personal, business and societal habits. As he explains, researchers at MIT found that habits follow the same framework:

See, Charles Duhigg, “The Power of Habit”

This is called a habit loop. Let’s say you have a habit, as I do, of having a cup of coffee as soon as you enter the kitchen in the morning. My cue is the smell of freshly made coffee when I come down the stairs. It starts before I get to the kitchen. It probably starts when I’m still upstairs. This gets my brain wanting coffee, which tells my digestive system to want coffee, and all sorts of hormones get released that activate the dopamine receptors in my brain (that crave things that feel good) and activate the hormones that govern my digestive system. Cues can be small but very powerful.

My routine is pouring myself a cup of coffee and putting in the exact right amount of milk for me, then sitting down to drink it.

Once I start drinking the coffee, I get my reward in the form of caffeine and everything it does for my system - tastes delicious, wakes me up, causes my brain to release dopamine because I’ve satisfied my craving (and also because caffeine is addictive), signals the start of my day, etc. Lots of rewards from coffee.

These rewards reinforce the cue; meaning the rewards reinforce doing the habit because I will get the reward.

Now you try it. What’s a habit loop you have? Write it out in the cue-routine-reward framework. 

Most of your habits are probably fine - even necessary and pleasing. But sometimes, we want to start or stop doing something; we might say we want to stop a bad habit. This is where people fall down all the time because…

You cannot simply stop a habit, you must replace it with something of equal or greater reward.

I learned this key insight from Judson Brewer’s amazing book, Unwinding Anxiety. In order to change a habit, you must create a new neural network in your brain for the new habit. Eventually, if you stick with the habit, this new neural network will get stronger and the original habit’s neural network will get weaker.

The key to sticking with the new habit is to focus on the reward. The new habit must have a reward that is equal to or greater to the original habit’s reward. If it does not, your brain won’t buy this whole habit replacement thing. 

Let’s say I wanted to give up coffee in the morning (shudder). The first thing I would do is figure out my habit loop, like I’ve outlined above. Then, I would think through rewards that are equal to or greater than what I get from coffee and what else might give me those rewards - so, in this case, something that will wake me up, give me a dopamine hit, and help start my day. What are things that might do that?

Two that come to mind are exercise or walking with a friend. Both wake me up, exercise causes our bodies to release dopamine, as does connecting with a friend, and both would help me start my day. 

Now I have two good replacement habits to choose from. If I do one or both of them consistently, eventually my coffee cravings and habit will diminish as that habit loop withers and the new neural network strengthens. 

Rewards are sometimes tricky to figure out. Let’s say you have a habit of checking social media and you want to check it less. First, determine your habit loop. What’s the cue? When do you have the urge to check social media? What time of day? What are you doing when that urge comes up? For some, it might be the beginning of the day and your reward is that you feel up to date with whatever happened overnight. For others, maybe you check social media when you are actually anxious about something else - like work. What’s the reward in that situation? Judson Brewer explains this really well in his book - your cue could be feeling overwhelmed at work. The routine of checking social media when you feel overwhelmed is that you can avoid the anxiety of your feelings. Sneaky reward, right?

All that to say, spend some time really thinking through what your cues and rewards are because it will make your habit replacement easier.

Set yourself up for success.

Create a plan for your new replacement habit by focusing on the cues that trigger your behavior. If I want to exercise in the mornings instead of drinking coffee, I might sleep in my exercise clothes, or put them next to my bed with my running shoes - something to remind me of my new habit that acts as a cue to do it. Maybe I also set my water bottle and keys by the front door, so I can completely bypass the kitchen and coffee maker in the mornings. On days when I don’t want to run, I might tell myself that I’ll just do it for five minutes and then see how I feel. The likelihood is that once I get started, I’ll keep going. 

Remember, this is all an experiment. 

See what works for you. Play with different cues and rewards. Know that you won’t be successful in doing your new habit every day and that’s okay and expected. But, over time, by following the new habit loop, you will see change.

Finally, celebrate your small wins.

Big change doesn’t take place all at once; it’s a series of small changes that happen over time and can lead to other changes or bigger changes (these are called keystone habits because they are the keystone to lots of changes). Be sure to celebrate your small changes. Celebrate every time you do your new habit. I mean really celebrate - party hats, confetti, high-fiving yourself. 

I can’t wait to hear about all your success!