How Habits Work: Part I
Now I didn’t know the man but Aristotle (pictured above) strikes me as a sharp guy!! No bullshit, straight talking and to the point! You know where you shtand with him like!
Anyway he put it well with this quote
“We are what we repeatedly do, success is not an act but a habit”
And that is exactly how results work. We are the product of our habits, what we repeatedly do, not what we do sometimes, not what we do on the good days, but what we do day in and day out. But it stands to reason that since we have learned every habit we can also re-learn new ones.
How Habits Work:
It turns out that every habits start with a psychological pattern called a habit loop which is a 3 part process. First there is a cue/trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and let a behavior unfold.
Then there is the routine which is the behavior itself.
The third step is the reward, something your brain likes that helps it remember the habit loop in the future.
Cue/Trigger
Routine/Behavior
Reward
How to Break the Cycle
Habits can be helpful, as long as they are good habits.
Even though we have developed most of our habits unconsciously (by modelling our parents, responding to the environmental cultural associations or creating coping mechanisms) we can consciously decide to change them.A Habits are like trees, the older the habits, the larger they are, and the harder they are to uproot.
As we said earlier in the piece, it stand to reason that since we have learned every habit, we can also learn/replace new ones.
To change the habit, the flowchart below helps you think through what you're feeling and thinking during each stage of the habit, then substitute the old reward and old routine with new ones. It's a great visual tool to help you practice until you have your new habit loop.
