The First Step to Taking Control of Your Habits
--
Science fact: A mobile phone is the only black hole in the universe that emits light. It still however, sucks you in, and spaghettifies your brain.
You come round, refocusing your eyes on the room around you, and dauntingly, shamefully, realise that an hour has passed since you picked up your glaring screen of possibility and embarked on an endless scroll of emptiness.
“Good God. I’ve achieved nothing!”, says your waking brain. “I hate myself.”
“What about if we gorge on loads of chocolate? You like chocolate, a lot… and it will ease this burning self-hatred that we’re both feeling”, says your other voice.
You come round, refocusing your eyes on the room around you, and dauntingly, shamefully, look downcast at the carpet as a discarded chocolate multi-pack wrapper comes into view, a sloven token of your weakness.
“Good God!”, says your waking brain. “I hate myself.”
And so the undercurrent of life continues, unchecked and unconscious. Damning your past self, promising that next time you’ll do better, followed by self-loathing when you aren’t, and unknowingly splashing around in the boat of promises, dreams and ultimate regret; churning the waters, but never moving forwards.
That is until, steeped in shame, and with the face-chocolate barely dry, you turn your attention to why you find it so hard to change your habits. And it’s this attention that can be a starting point for real change, because without such awareness your mind is free to take the easiest route down the rapids of short term joy, with no one at the paddles.
Becoming Aware
“So under stress we take a drink, or have a snack, or pick a fight, or get depressed, all without awareness that we have made a decision; our bad habits operate unconsciously.” — Dr Richard O’Connor, Rewire
In his book The Craving Mind neuroscientist Judson Brewer promotes a technique given the acronym RAIN, and describes his success in using RAIN with a smoking cessation group.
Participants are encouraged to Recognise their growing craving, Allow it to be there, Investigate the emotions and thoughts that come from the craving, and Note what’s happening to them. In other words, it’s a plan for self-awareness. And crucially, a plan for intervention; a point at which to stop and take note of a temptation, and question if this is really the route you want to be taking —a route of chocolate-faced gluttony.
And it’s not just Dr Brewer that cites awareness as being imperative to taking control. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, suggests writing down three things to describe how you’re feeling when you have an unhelpful craving to “force a moment of attention.”
In Rewire, Psychotherapist Dr Richard O’Connor recommends we “monitor our thoughts, feelings and behaviours” by using a daily log. “Don’t let your automatic self sweep you away,” he writes.
And in Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests verbalising your actions as a means of monitoring whether what you’re about to do is consciously inline with who you want to be; a powerful self-reflection check.
So we can become aware and stop, and truly think, consciously think, in the moment of temptation. Wake up and smell the chocolate! Notice the undercurrent of life, and see it for what it really is. Become aware of the free-floating spinning boat of promises and regret, and make a plan for how to start riding the waves maaaan ✌.️
Habits in the Brain
“… you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant nuerons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated” - Cal Newport, Deep Work
Dr Brewer and co are referring to awareness in the sense of becoming more lucidly conscious of our own thoughts and feelings in the moment, but an awareness and understanding of how our physical, meaty brains function can be helpful too.
As you repeat a behaviour, the associated neural pathways in the brain are strengthened by an insulating layer of myelin over the neurons. Myelin increases the speed at which signals are transmitted and reduces the energy required to fire the same pathways again. The more an unhelpful behaviour is repeated, the more it becomes physically embedded in the brain and easier to journey along in future — like the aforementioned boat of promises, swept away in the currents to the valley of shame.
Given that self-awareness can be a powerful tool in making a move away from our unhelpful behaviours, Dr O’Connor suggests that the same physiological processes that cement unhelpful habits can also be used to form new, positive habits.
He suggests that vigilance itself can become a habit the more and more you practise self-control, and that this can become easier over time with repetition.
While there are many techniques for behavioural change, and I’ll be exploring more on this blog, this practised self awareness gives us our first step towards taking control of our habits.
So next time you can ask yourself, whether it’s when you have that shiny wrapper of supposed joy in your hand, or a glowing screen of endless possibility — “is this really what I want to be doing?” Say it out loud! This interjection provides the opportunity to take control of the autopilot that’s had you frustratingly splashing around in circles, and actively steer the course for where you truly want to be heading.
Putting It Into Practise
My own experiences in the churning waters of promise and regret were one of the reasons I began building Yourganize. This first step of self awareness is a powerful realisation, but with an excitable and distractible mind, like a dog following his nose to the smell of a bone, it’s naturally difficult over time to remember and put into play a Dr Brewer like plan just by relying on memory and thinking alone. After all, it’s in those moments of temptation, juicy bone or otherwise, that we’re not truly thinking at all.
What I needed was a space to offload my chattering mind, a place to create a detailed plan towards forming my new, positive habits and a planned response for intervening and taking control of my unhelpful ones. The Habits & Goals section of Yourganize aims to tackle just that. Adding a habit takes you through a step-by-step process based on reading around habit formation to help you start monitoring your habits.
Habits on Yourganize have a diary section for the daily log recommended by Dr Richard O’Connor, a place to note what’s happening while you’re feeling temptation — the “N” from Judson Brewer’s RAIN technique. This can take the form of Charles Duhigg’s writing down three things you’re feeling from a craving, giving you the necessary momentary pause, to catch your breath before the usual undercurrent carries you away.
For creating new positive habits (e.g. I will go running), the diary section can be used for reviewing the specifics of your plan of action, which has been shown to increase the likelihood that you’ll carry them out (more on this in a blog post to follow).
And for practising self awareness itself as a habit, as recommended by Dr O’Connor, by actively tracking your habits and goals you’re mindfully, consciously increasing your understanding of your own behaviours over time.
This gives you your first steps towards taking control of your habits:
- Write down (or add to Yourganize) the unhelpful habits you want to do less of (e.g. eating too much, spending too much time on your phone, chasing juicy bones etc)
- Set out the new habits you want to do more of (e.g. exercising more, reading more, remembering to take vitamins etc)
- Use the diary for each habit to pause and note how you’re feeling in three emotions or feelings (for unhelpful habits), or for reviewing your specific plan of action (for new, positive habits)
- Every time you carry out the habit, keep a tally (or click the +1 on Yourganize) to be mindfully aware of your progress, where you can improve, what’s working well and what isn’t
- Repeat this practise of awareness over time to improve your understanding of your own behaviours and to form the positive habit of self reflection
And with this understanding and awareness, the undercurrent of life is exposed. Damning your past self, but now armed with an understanding that this is naturally how your mind works, and that it’s a perfectly normal situation to be regret-gorging chocolate.
But next time, rather than just promising you’ll do better, you have a plan for action. A plan to investigate and note down your emotions in the moment of temptation and ask yourself, is this something I really want to be doing? As Dr Brewer says, “You must become the subject of your own scientific discovery.”
Start paddling out of those unhelpful circling waters and choose the direction you want to be cruising in, purposefully taking control of what will now be known as “the joy boat of hopes and dreams.” (Boaty McBoatface is already taken).
