“New Year, Same Me” — How It All Comes Down to Habits
The beginning of a new year feels like a fresh start, often leaving us — including me — with new goals and ideas of what we want to accomplish in the new year. But so many times we quit our New Years resolution by the beginning of February and don’t pick them up again until January of the next year. We say “I’ll be better this year” and “I’m actually going to do it this time.” And then when we miss a day at the gym or struggle in our pursuit of being a self-improvement and we give up. Why do we give up so easily?
Why do the same people who finish college and master’s degrees, who consistently serve in their churches and communities, and who excel in their careers have such a hard time keeping New Year’s resolutions?
It’s because New Year’s resolutions involve changing habits, and without understanding how they work, habits often get the better of us. The thing about habits is that once they’re established, you can’t get rid of them.
That’s why, when we think about forming new habits, we’re thinking about it all wrong.
Our lives are essentially series of habits, good and bad, interwoven into our daily lives so much so that we don’t think about them most of the time. Think about when you woke up this morning. What did you do? Check your phone? Hop in the shower? Grab a banana from the kitchen? Whatever you did, is almost certainly a habit — you do the same thing every morning.
All habits are part of what Charles Duhigg, in his book The Power of Habit describes as The Habit Loop. The idea is that each habit is comprised of a cue, routine, and reward. When you wake up in the morning, the cue is your alarm clock. Next follows the routine: you check your phone. You hop in the shower. You grab a banana. Your routine then generates a reward: You’re awake and starting the day.
The point Duhigg makes in his book is that we can’t get rid of old bad habits, but we can essentially reprogram them by replacing the “routine” section of the Habit Loop with something different.
The key here is, we have to premeditate what we will do when we see the cue, or see the trigger, and what our reward is going to be. And it HAS to be specific. As in the picture above, the person has a craving for relief after a long day at work. When they felt that craving (cue), their old habit was to grab a drink (routine) and then they were rewarded with relief. In order to change that habit, the person decided that when they felt a raving for relief after a long day of work, they would talk to a friend instead — and doing so brought the same relief as taking a drink.
Habits are not created or erased, rather they are changed. Since our days are essentially strings of habits, rather than creating new habits, our focus should be on changing old habits.
The point here is that changing habits IS possible. It comes down to identifying cues, determining what your routine will be once you see a cue, and receiving your reward. Changing the focus from setting arbitrary goals to changing habits will make us more successful in achieving our goals.
To learn more, see this Ted Talk by Charles Duhigg
