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We usually rely on willpower to stop ourselves from doing negative things or force ourselves to build positive habits.But our willpower comes in limited supply — it can’t always save us from repeating a bad habit. And when it fails, we often feel guilty and ashamed.
There’s a way to fix it.
Habits are automatic behaviors. Once you know how your brain creates these automatic behaviors, you can make or break habits without relying much on your willpower.
How Are Habits Formed In The Brain?
Habit formation is not a standalone behavior. It has 3 steps that move in a cycle:
- Dopamine Seeking: Our brains are wired to seek dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. This makes us want to do things that will give us a sense of enjoyment.
- Behavior Execution: When we perform a specific behavior (the action), our brain releases dopamine as a reward for that action. This release creates a positive feeling, which reinforces the behavior and makes us more likely to do it again.
- Reward Association: The brain links the action to the reward, creating a reward-dopamine-pleasure loop. The action and the positive feelings that result strengthen over time, making it more and more desirable to repeat the action.
- Cue-Action-Reward Cycle: As the habit begins to form, a sequence emerges: a cue (or trigger) calls for the action, which is followed by the reward. This cycle reinforces the habit, as the brain learns to expect the reward following the action initiated by the cue.
So, the habit formation cycle through:
- Cue — a trigger that fires the desire to do an action
- Action — daily or more frequent repetition of that behavior
- Reward — giving or receiving a reward for completing the behavior
How To Harness The Habit Cycle To Break Bad Habits
- Identify the cues that trigger your unwanted behavior. Cues can be external, such as specific times of day, locations, or social situations, or internal, such as emotions or thoughts.
- Build a trigger awareness to help anticipate and be vigilant of when you are likely to carry out the habit you wish to break.
- Create a replacement plan to substitute the unwanted action with a better behavior. As soon you notice the cue, you would consciously push yourself to choose the alternative behavior.
- Reward yourself for carrying out this alternative behavior. This is the crux action. Celebrate the success of having replaced the bad with the good.
- Keep at it consistently. Over time, with many repetitions, this new habit will become an unconscious habit, meaning you won’t need conscious deliberations to push yourself to do it.
Example: You have a bad habit of reaching for a sugary afternoon snack at work. Here’s how you could use the Cue-Action-Reward cycle to break this habit:
Step 1: Identify the Cues
- Time-based cue. The cue is the specific time of day—afternoon—when you feel a dip in energy.
- Environment-based cues could be being in the break room or seeing colleagues enjoying snacks.
- Emotion-based cues could be stress or boredom.
Step 2: Build Trigger Awareness
- Start a journal to track your urges — the time, your emotional state, and the setting.
- You’ll find a pattern emerge. This will help you anticipate and prepare to say No at those times.
Step 3: Create A Replacement Plan
- Keep a small container of mixed nuts, yogurt, or sliced fruit on your desk.
- When the cue hits, force yourself to choose this healthier replacement behavior.
Step 4: Reward Yourself
- Pat your back for keeping your commitment to healthy eating
- Treat yourself to a non-food reward, like a few minutes of your favorite music
- Talk to someone you like, go for a short walk outside, or take a siesta for a few minutes
Rewards help anchor the new behavior in your brain.
Step 5: Keep at It Consistently
- Keep practicing this replacement strategy every time you get an afternoon cue.
- Eventually, you would just reach out for the healthier food without even thinking about any sugary snack.
Where Does Habit Live In The Brain
Habit lives in the basal ganglia of the brain.
Any new behavior begins with conscious deliberation and intention, governed by our brain’s executive function, often referred to as ‘System 2’—the prefrontal cortex.
This region is responsible for complex cognitive tasks, such as solving math problems, learning a foreign language, or navigating unfamiliar environments.
As we consistently repeat a behavior over time, our brain gradually shifts from relying on the executive function to becoming dependent on the basal ganglia, a more primitive area of the brain.
This transition allows the behavior to become automatic, meaning we no longer need to consciously think about initiating or continuing it.
Eventually, we are no longer conscious of the behavior and carry it effortlessly, without the need for deliberate thought or intention.
Habit Modification Strategies
Two primary strategies that modify our habits are:
- Reinforcement by Reward: In this, we give a reward to instill any good behavior.
- Prevention by Punishment: In this, we give punishment to stop any unacceptable behavior.
The punishment strategy is something we all know of. When we were kids, our parents or teachers may have used this on many of us.
However, the punishment strategy doesn’t work as well as the reward system. Rewards are more effective than punishment, suggest researchers (Dreber & Rand, Winners don’t punish. Nature, 2008).
The more effective reward-reinforcement method can help both establish and break bad habits.
It works around the idea that we set up many goalposts to reach the final point of our desired behavior change. And reward ourselves each time we reach these goalposts.
3 R’s of Habit Formation
The 3 R’s of habit formation are:
- Resolve: Make a firm commitment to pursuing the new habit.
- Rehearse: Set yourself up for success by practicing the new habit.
- Repeat: Rehash the new habit enough times for it to become automatic.
Every habit, according to James Clear, follows the same three-step pattern known as the “3 R’s”:
- Reminder — an event that sets off the behavior
- Routine — the behavior itself; the action taken
- Reward — the benefit you gain from doing the behavior
The problem with habits is, we are incompetent and underperformer at forming good new habits as well as breaking old bad habits.
People may therefore continue to perform a habitual action even when they lack the motivation to do it.
Similarly, people often fail to maintain behavior changes because they lose motivation.
- The first problem is, most of us have nasty habits we want to get rid of forever, but find too difficult.
- The second problem is, many of us adopt new behaviors well, but fail to maintain them over time.
Psychologists offer a solution: modify your behavior around it.
And one of the most effective ways of modifying a set behavior (that is, making or breaking a habit) is through an incremental use of self-control and reward reinforcement.
It’s easy to go for the throat, but it’s hard to pull your hand back after adjusting their tie. That’s mostly what self-control is all about.
Habit Theory: Psychology of Habits
Habit theory explores the psychology of habits making up human behavior.
In psychology, habitual behaviors are automatically triggered actions that people perform while in situations that are the same as what they have encountered before and have learned to do the same action.
Repeating a behavior in the same situation or context reinforces mental associations between the context and the behavior.
Habits form when repeated exposure to the same setting triggers a preexisting mental association. This evokes an urge to act as learned in the past, unconsciously and with minimal conscious forethought.
A Habit Is Many Tasks
A habit is defined as a sequence of tasks that we learn to perform unconsciously and automatically in response to certain cues or triggers.
Note the three 3 things in that definition:
- It’s not a single task, but a series of interrelated activities.
- We do it automatically, mostly without any conscious intervention.
- We perform habitual actions in reaction to triggers in our environment, much like Pavlov’s dogs.
Habits can be best explained as learned automatic responses with specific features (Wood et al., 2014). Habits get activated in memory autonomously without needing any executive control from the higher brain (Evans & Stanovich 2013).
Final Words
Habits can cause us to eat unhealthy foods mindlessly.
In a study conducted at a local cinema, participants with stronger habits of eating popcorn at the movies ate more than those with weak habits, even when they disliked the popcorn because it was stale and unpalatable. (The Pull of The Past, Neal et al., 2011).
Finally, don’t stop trying if you fail at avoiding a bad habit once or twice. These failed attempts have fine-tuned your result-achieving brain mechanism called psycho-cybernetics.
Remember, no failure is final until you stop trying.
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√ Also Read: 7 Steps To Change Any Habit Using Psychology.
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