Is habit simply a behaviour repeated over time?

Summary

Is habit a behaviour repeated over time? Yes and no. To understand habits, we need to look at the value of them, how they are formed and then triggered. We form habits, because habitual behaviour takes less energy. To form a habit, you need to understand the what, the how and the why. The habit is triggered through a sequence of pictures, sounds and feelings. To change a habit, you need to identify the whole sequence and change it bit by bit.

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Habits continue to be a hot topic, and are sometimes even crowned the king of the determinants of behaviour. Not just personal behaviour, but also leadership, collaboration and creative behaviour. Is habit a behaviour repeated over time? Yes and no. This is a simplified definition of a habit. If it was only a behaviour repeated over time, it would be easy to form or change habits. But we all know that habits can be darn difficult to form or change. There is a hidden key to habits and you can read about it below.

Let’s start with how and why habits are formed. For any change to happen, your mind needs to agree with it. If it does not understand your desired change and why you want to make it, it is less likely to agree with it, and your efforts will remain fruitless.

To understand habits, we need to look at three aspects:

1. the value of habits,
2. what is needed for a habit to form,
3. and how a habit is triggered.

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The value of habits

Why do we even need habits? The answer is simple – habitual behaviour takes less energy. We need energy to create. Humans are creators by nature, you know, they are made by the face of their own creator. And creating takes energy. Lots of it. By automating less-creative activities, we save energy for creating. If you never thought of yourself as a creative person, let alone creator, you may want to take a few moments to reflect on that, because this is exactly what you are. You are the creator of your own life, and much more. It is not only architects, artists and artisans, who are creators. We all are.

The first time you do something – whether it is a new kind of thinking or wood carving, you use a great deal of brain power to make sense of what you are doing and how you can reach a successful outcome. It gets less energy-intensive already the second time around. Depending on how much reward the activity provides, and how well it supports your self-image, current or desired, you can automatise a behaviour quite quickly. You may sometimes feel that so-called bad habits stick faster than good ones. The reason behind it lies in rewards and identity. Either the rewards of the good habit don’t match the amount of energy required for the activity, or your identity is rejecting the change. As soon as your mind perceives the change as loss, instead of a gain, you’re up for failure.

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What is needed to form a habit

At the heart of any habit there are three aspects that need to be covered for it to form. These are the WHAT, the HOW, and the WHY, i.e., information, skill and motivation. If you don’t know what to do, or how to do it, or you have no motivation to do it, there’s no chance of forming a habit. Motivation sums up rewards and identity described in the previous paragraph. Sometimes we omit to see the motivation behind bad habits. We mix up the desire to change with the motivation to maintain the status quo. In order to change a habit, you need to find the retainer for status quo, dismantle it and then rebuild the habit.

For example, procrastinating can be motivated by a protection mechanism ‘if I don’t do anything, I cannot fail either’. We may want to think that the pain of neglecting a task entirely is larger than the gain of restraining of any action, but very often the first stems from early childhood and the second from adulthood, making the first thought pattern much stickier than the second. These kind of thinking patterns are strong motivators, even though we would prefer to behave differently.

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How a habit is triggered

I started off claiming that habits are not only behaviours repeated over time. I’m trying to form a habit of writing – like I do just now. But it is not only about typing up the text, is it!? The process starts with a cue or trigger – in my example with an insight that triggers a flow of thoughts on a topic. The trigger is followed by a sequence of actions, many of which go unnoticed – hence the difficulty of forming or changing habits – we only focus on one or some parts of it, neglecting the full sequence. In this same example the insights would be followed by a summarising thought “I need to write about it”. This is the initial driver. Then I stumble upon several fearful thoughts about how to structure the text or if it is going to be any good or received well, intersected with bodily reactions like heaviness in my chest. Somewhere in the middle I can hear my teacher’s voice in my head praising my classmate’s writing over everyone else’s, accompanied by images of the classmate’s proud smile about her writing skills, diminishing my confidence in my own writing skills. All this happens in a minute or two; long before I even sit behind the computer. Of course, several self-protection mechanisms kick in to protect my integrity, sense of self-worth and energy. The rewards are ambiguous, and therefore seem not worth pursuing.

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The hidden key

To form a habit, I need to overcome these obstacles in my mind, and change the story, the whole sequence of activities. I have the what and the how, but my motivation is failing me. It will keep failing me until I rewrite my own story and amplify the rewards to exceed the energy required for change.

NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) provides a key to changing this sequence of images, sounds and sensations that lead to the state that either promotes or impedes a certain behaviour. You need to be mindful of the whole sequence, not only attend to the parts of that you feel comfortable working on. When you have identified the sequence, you can change it rather simply. You can dissociate with the pictures you see in your mind, i.e., step out of them, if you are on them. Large colourful moving pictures can be decreased in size, have the colour removed and made still. Loud judgemental noises or words can be either turned down or their tonality changed. Bodily sensations can be played with, changed and moved around the body to have less effect.

Then amplify the characteristics related to the desired state. Athletes, entertainers and educators develop pre-performance routines that consist of empowering images, sounds and sensations that put them in peak state. Pictures in your mind’s eye can be magnified, made brighter, animated, sounds added and heightened, excitement amplified etc.

Changing habits does not have to be all serious and demanding. It can be turned into a game to shed some seriousness and add more lightness. Take a habit of concern and first scrutinise it from every angle. Identify the cornerstones and dig into the motivations. Then play around with images, sounds and feelings, and try to create a change. If it does not work the first time, just do it again. And again. And again. As long as it takes to make the desired change. As said in the beginning – if the rewards of the change are not worth pursuing, don’t waste your energy. If they are, however, keep going until you reach your goal.

#habits #changinghabits #NLP