On forests, habits, and change

It all starts with a goal.

While reading this sentence, most likely you are using both your conscious as well as your unconscious mind. You are consciously thinking about the words that you just read, making sense of them in your mind, evaluating their truthfulness and much more. At the same time, if you aren’t new to reading, the process of transforming the letters into words, the words into sentences, sentences into information and so on happens completely automatic. It is unconscious. The same goes for other processes inside your brain and body, most of which you won’t ever be aware of – that is, you will not think consciously about them while they are happening. In fact, this is true for most things we do in our lives, and it is true for each and every one of us. So often we go about our days on autopilot, doing the things that we are used to doing in the same way as we always do them, functioning almost like a machine. Why is that? How does this process work and how can we use it in our favour?

Exploring these questions leads us to a better understanding of the ways our minds work and to the origins of habits, which helps in utilizing the underlying mechanisms for our own benefit.

Our minds operate on two systems. The consciousness is the genius, rational, logical, “thinking” part of our minds. You can think of it as the voice inside your head, the one that you can actively guide and follow, the one that we use to reason. While our consciousness has incredible capabilities it is also slow, indecisive, and can only focus on one or two things at a time, which is why we would never survive if we had to actively manage every little thing that life brings to us with our consciousness, from processing internal stimuli or external inputs to making judgments and decisions.

Luckily, we also have an unconscious part as well, one that is constantly operating in the background, working fast and decisive, doing all the mental tasks you are too busy to actively control completely automatically. This is not only incredibly important for our well-being as well as general physical and mental functioning, but it is indispensable for us to live normal lives.

While the automation of mental processes is necessary and hugely practical, it is not always in and of itself good. Yes, relying on your intuition and gut feeling, which translates into trusting your subconscious, is the best choice you can make in countless life situations because the unconscious mind is way better at making decisions when confronted with overly complex situations as it has the capacity to consider more factors than you could ever even consciously imagine. Nonetheless, it does so by using techniques that have some major flaws.

To make decisions fast and efficiently the subconscious mind heavily relies on the usage of heuristics and biases, which are mental shortcuts that help us to evaluate situations based on simplifications and assumptions. By making use of those simplifications and assumptions, as well as emotions, the subconscious allows us to avoid making complex calculations every time we face something new or challenging. However, it also leads to frequent errors in our judgments and decisions. And it also creates a lack of rationality and conscious control in the development of automatic behaviours or habits.

Both heuristics and habits share one major goal: To relieve us from consciously thinking too much. It is therefore the task of our conscious selves to evaluate our routines, habits, and judgements from a standpoint of rationality from time to time, and to make sure that the habits we develop are in line with who we want to be and how we want to behave.

Additional to frequent evaluation, we can try to increase our conscious control over the way our unconsciousness functions. Let’s take a moment to imagine our unconsciousness like a forest. Naturally, it will be there no matter what we do, but with a little bit of help, we can help it to grow stronger and to use its resources more efficiently, both for the benefit of the forest and subsequently our own. We can actively shape how this vast forest of unconsciousness looks like by planting new seeds, that is thoughts, which we must nurture into existence in order to become trees, or thought patterns and habits. The more the seed is nurtured, the more attention we give it, the stronger it will get. It will develop roots and link up with its surroundings, and over time it will grow. That way a seed turns into a tree and similarly, by planting and nurturing an idea it can become a frequent line of thought and eventually turn into a habit. A seed could be an idea, a goal, a thought, or an emotion, and by repeatedly giving it attention and putting effort into this goal or idea we can nurture it and help it grow. The development of roots and their connections to other trees and plants then happens largely automatically.

Just like a new plant or tree, a new habit takes time to be implemented and developed, because we must establish and strengthen the roots, or neurological pathways, within our brains, something that can only be done over a continuous period. Researchers suggest that implementing a habit takes anything from 19 to 100 days, but I believe that there are too many factors involved, making a definitive statement about the time it takes difficult. There will always be differences regarding the type of habit we want to develop, a person’s attributes such as their personality, determination, level of self-efficacy, as well as countless other contextual and environmental factors. There is not a definite point when you can say that you made a certain behaviour a habit, but I trust that your intuition will tell you when you reached the point where it is almost automatic.

Starting a new habit always starts with an idea or goal. To motivate ourselves and set ourselves on a path for continuous effort and success we should set SMART goals, that means goals which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timebound. Once we have done that, it often helps to develop an action plan, where we write down a strategy or a specific plan of what steps we need to take and at what time, where, how, with whom and with what help we want to take them. Both, goal setting and action planning help us to hold ourselves accountable and motivated. This is how we plant the seed.

In the next phase, the one that I consider more fun, we actively transform our conscious thoughts and goals into unconscious behaviours by programming our unconsciousness. Three activities help us doing so: Repetition, connection to emotions, and visualisations. Through frequent repetition of our ideas or goals and by connecting them to strong (positive) emotions and creating mental images of how we achieve these goals we strengthen the neurological pathways of this thought, making it a foundation of our unconsciousness. Remember that this is the same system that controls most of our daily behaviours. If we do this every day, we are programming our unconscious mind to automatically behave in the way we desire, moving towards achieving our goals. This is how we nurture the seed and turn it into a tree. And over time, it is how we can shape the forest according to our vision.

When talking about habits, we must talk about already existing ones too. Can you imagine why it is usually way harder to quit an existing, but harmful habit than to build a new one? A major reason is that our brain is already wired in a certain way. The neurological pathways already exist and grew strong. By repeatedly thinking the same thought or feeling a certain way we become used to it. Doing so then becomes automatic and unintentional, which makes it so hard to stop them from occurring. The first step to overcoming harmful habits is to become aware of and accept them as part of our current self. It doesn’t mean to leave them as they are, but it takes inner strength and willpower to overcome them, which is a lot harder to maintain if we are constantly doubting or denying their existence at the same time. It is not easy, but there are tricks that help you take back control over your automatic behaviours and thoughts.

Bad news first: It seems like it is almost impossible to delete an existing neurological pathway. Although neuroplasticity suggests that our brain can change itself physically, for example parts of our brain might grow (or shrink) when we do regular physical or mental exercise, meditation, or when we spend more time with people we love, this change is impossible to consciously direct into a certain area of our brain. And even if we could direct our efforts, where to? We don’t even know where exactly in our brain that would be. So, what can we do? Charles Duhigg suggests that it is much easier to override a habit than to delete it.

Usually, a habit or automatic behaviour gets activated after some sort of trigger occurs. A trigger, or cue, can be either internal (e.g. a physical craving) or external (e.g. something in your environment) or both. When perceiving that cue the habit gets activated and the behaviour starts automatically. Once we finish, we usually get some sort of emotional or physical reaction that reinforces the habit. A reaction can be anything, from a sense of completion, satisfaction, or pride, to the release of hormones like dopamine or adrenaline, or even negative reactions like guilt or disgust which we can become so used to that we crave them anyway. So normally the process goes something like this:

1.??????Trigger

2.??????Habit

3.??????Reaction.

If we were to identify the cues that let us do unbeneficial or even harmful behaviours and identify the emotional or physical reactions we unconsciously crave as well, we could start to become more and more aware of them. Then, when we recognize the trigger, we could replace the habit with a different activity that can give us a similar kind of reaction. Emotions are by far the strongest drivers of behaviour; thus, it is not smart to try and go against your emotions. Instead, we want to use them for our own advantage and benefit.

For example, once we consciously notice a cue that makes us want to smoke a cigarette, eat unhealthy food or to judge ourselves for our mistakes and flaws, we are still going to react to the trigger, but not in our usual way. Think about the emotional reaction you would get from following your automatic behaviour and then think of some alternative action that could also give you a similar emotional reaction, preferably a positive one. We then override our behaviour with a different response, e.g. by doing 10 push-ups, writing in a journal or chewing gum instead of smoking a cigarette, or by drinking banana milk shake instead of eating ice cream, or by being kind to ourselves and practicing self-compassion instead of blaming ourselves for everything that’s wrong in our world.

The new, substituted action should be the same one every time we notice the trigger of our old habit, and, with time, the old habit will transform itself into something new and useful. We will end up with a process like this:

1.??????Trigger

2.??????Alternative behaviour/ New habit

3.??????Reaction

Sooner or later the neural pathways of the new habit will outgrow the ones of the old one, which will start fading away slowly.

Both, building a new habit as well as stopping existing ones can be really hard. But I believe that you already know and feel that you have it inside of you. We all have the potential for positive change inside of us. Often it takes just one new and positive habit to change our lives, unlocking the doors to implement more beneficial habits into our routines and thus transforming the way we live in the long term. By letting one stone roll downhill we might create an avalanche of positive changes. Finding ways to increase control over our own unconsciousness and automatic behaviours is incredibly valuable and powerful because it allows us to have another tool which we can use to access a lot more of our own potential. If you have other techniques that work well for you, I would be very happy if you shared them in the comment section.

I want to emphasize one more thing to consider when building your best habits for the long term. Sustainability in changing your behaviours is essential. Too often we want to change ourselves too fast, e.g. going on extra-tough diets to lose weight as fast as possible, but overlooking the effects on the long term. Often, we overestimate what we can do in a day, in a week or even a month, but underestimate what we can do in a year. By implementing strategies that are sustainable, and that you can keep for the rest of your life if you want, you make things easier for yourself. Don’t push yourself too hard. After all, you should still want that change after 3 weeks!

When it comes to building new habits, one tool that works well for me is to use rules such as the 2-Day rule, which says that you should not take more than one day off in a row. It helps to keep myself in check and it guarantees continuity on at least every second day, which is quite an accomplishment when seen over the course of a whole year. Of course, this is not a great advice if you want to quit your old and harmful habits, so if you want to quit smoking then don’t just quit every second day. ??

Even though behaviours can become almost automatic, it is still on you to follow through with it. Good luck!