Breaking the Pattern: Changing Your Habits
Written by Cassandra Curado
If you take a moment to think about it, most of your day-to-day life is created through habits and routines. You wake up, go to the washroom, shower, have breakfast, get ready for work, come home, make dinner, watch tv, go to sleep, and start your routine over again the next day. Majority of the day your brain functions on ‘autopilot,’ making it difficult to break away from the habits and routines your brain becomes so familiar with. However, it’s not impossible to change your habits and this blog post will give you some helpful tips on how to do so.
What is a Habit?
Habits are routine behaviours that become automatic and effortless over time when they’re repeated within the same context. Interestingly enough, the majority of your everyday behaviours are actually habits. For example, as a child you learned to wash your hands after going to the washroom. By repeating this behaviour throughout your life, now you’re likely to just automatically walk over to the sink to clean your hands without much thought. This is one of the many benefits of relying on habits.
Imagine how exhausting it would be if you had to stop and consciously think about every single behaviour you had to do throughout your day. Habits make our lives far more efficient and free up our mental energy to focus on more complex tasks and decisions. However, this is also the downside to habits especially when we form habits that aren’t always ideal. Maybe you want to create new habits to live a healthier life or build stronger relationships. Though the automatic nature of habits is very helpful, it also makes them very challenging to change, but it can be done through repeated conscious effort.
The Neuroscience Behind Changing Habits
In your brain there are neurons that send signals throughout your entire body. These tiny nerve cells are responsible for every behaviour and action you make throughout your day. When you complete an action, the neurons that help you perform this action activate. At the same time, another set of neurons are responsible for perceiving cues in your environment. For example, when you brush your teeth, your performance neurons help you complete this action, and your perceptual neurons recognize that you’re brushing your teeth after you wake up and go to the washroom. The more you brush your teeth at this same time, your neurons create a strong link between the action of brushing your teeth in the context of waking up and going to the washroom. The stronger that connection forms through repetition, the more automatic the behaviour becomes and turns into a habit. Now after years of brushing your teeth in the morning, it takes your brain very little effort to complete this task.
Everything starts off as a spontaneous or goal-directed behaviour. As you learn and repeat a behaviour, over time the ‘habit pathway’ takes the lead, turning this behaviour into an automatic habit. When undesirable behaviours are ingrained into the ‘habit pathway’, these habits can interfere with the goals we try to achieve. It can be difficult to turn off your brain’s autopilot setting to change your behaviour and achieve your goals, but it can be done through repeated effort.
Tread a New Path: Changing Your Old Habits
Find an Alternative
Researchers have found that simply trying to quit an old habit won’t help you change your ways. In fact, trying to suppress and ignore your unwanted habit can actually strengthen it in your mind. So if you can’t erase a habit from your mind, how can you change these behaviours? The best way to beat the automatic nature of an unwanted habit is to replace it with a new desired habit. Similarly as your unwanted habit was formed, you can rewire your brain to create a new habit by repeating this behaviour.
Imagine, you have the goal of being healthy but everyday after work you sit and watch TV until you go to sleep. To change this habit, you decide to go for a walk after you eat dinner. At first, this may be hard, but the more often you go for a walk after dinner the stronger this new habit will form in your brain. Eventually you won’t even think about going for a nightly walk as it becomes part of your routine.
Common Habits and Alternatives
Snacking on chips every night → Snacking on fruit or vegetables
Getting fast food for lunch → Meal prep your lunches for the week every Sunday
Waking up and scrolling on social media → Pick up a book to read or journal
Negative self-talk → Practice positive affirmations each morning
Spending 24/7 with your partner → Create time for yourself at least one day a week
Prioritizing work → Schedule date night each week for quality time
2. Break It Down
It can feel overwhelming when you’re setting goals for yourself and thinking of all the habits you want to change. Take a moment, breathe, and break your goal into smaller steps. Setting goals and changing habits aren’t easy, but they can feel far more manageable when you think of them as smaller tasks.
If your goal is to work on your relationship with yourself, you don’t need to overload yourself with self-care practices and affirmations all at once. Instead, try forming one habit first and then integrate new habits over time. First try journaling once a day and once you’ve accomplished that, they try adding positive affirmations into your routine. When you break goals and habits into smaller changes you can feel more motivated to reach your goal.
3. Make a Plan
It’s important to remember that habits are formed when actions are repeated in the same context. When you want to form new habits, try making a plan that helps you stay consistent. If you want to start going to the gym, pick a time of day that consistently works with your schedule; when you wake up, on your lunch break, or after work. Each time you complete your new behaviour in the same context, the easier and more automatic the behaviour will become part of your daily routine.
4. Track Your Progress
It’s easy to lose track of your progress over time. When you keep track of the hard work you’ve done for yourself you can feel accomplished as you form new habits and reach your desired goals. Try creating a log, chart, or bullet journal as a visual reminder for your success.
5. Get Support
Depending on the habit you want to change, you may wish to reach out for support. If you want to focus on your habits within your relationships, consider individual relationship therapy or couples counselling to target these behaviours. If you’re living with ADHD, counselling services can help you establish strategies to create healthy habits and routines in your life.
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