HABITUAL – HEALTHY HABITS

Today, we’re going to learn how to redesign a habit.

Whether you want to break a habit or start a new habit, they key is to divide the habit into its three components: Cue > Routine > Habit

CUE: certain place, a time of day, and emotion, a sequence of thoughts, Or the company of particular people.

HABIT: performing the habit, often subconsciously—ergo, ‘habitually’.

REWARD: physical sensations, emotional payoffs, Such as feelings of pride or satisfaction.

Here’s a short illustrative breakdown of how Charles Duhigg helped discover and bring to light how the habit loop works:

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Golden rule of habit change (how transformation occurs):

You can never truly extinguish bad habits. Rather, to change the habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward insert a new routine. In other words, to change a habit, we must first identify the cues and rewards, then replaced the routine.

Ready to begin changing an unhealthy habit? Let’s do it!

STEP 1: Choose an Unhealthy Habit

Let’s start with a small unhealthy habit and focused on learning the habit loop process of CUE > HABIT > REWARD. After we understand the process, we can gradually apply it to replace bigger and bigger habits.

Example: I want to replace my unhealthy habit of stress eating.

STEP 2: Identify the Habit’s Reward

The reward for a bad habit typically shows itself emotionally such as a feeling of accomplishment or satisfaction. It is also often a physical sensation like relaxation and means of destressing.

Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. To figure out which cravings are driven your particular habit, it's useful to experiment with different rewards. Testing different hypotheses will help determine which craving is driving your routine.

Write down the first three habit rewards that come to mind.

By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you were actually craving which is essential to redesigning the habit once you figured out the routine and reward, what remains is identifying the cue.

Example: Stress eating gives the body a sensation nourishment and the mind a sense of accomplishment.

STEP 3: Identify the Habit’s Cue

Experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into 1 of 5 categories:

    1. Location – where are you?

 

  • Emotional State – What’s your emotional state?
  • Other people – Who else is around?
  • Immediately preceding action – What action preceded the urge?

 

Answer the questions above until enough data is available to define the cue.

It might be glaringly obvious to you or you might need to do some inner digging to determine what it is that cue the routine of your unhealthy habit.

Once you have an idea of what your cue it. Write it down.

Example: My cue for stress eating happens when I am confronted with a challenging task.

STEP 4: Replacing the Routine

Now comes the fun part. We get to choose a similar, but healthier routine/habit that will give us a similar satisfaction when we are triggered by our cue.

Once we understand the three key components of a habit—(1) the reward driving your behavior, (2) the cue triggering it, and (3) the routine we can begin to shift the behavior. We change to a better routine by planning for the cue, and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward we are craving.

Make it fun! Anything goes. It’s all about trial and error. With enough focus and intention, you will begin to see how healthy habits can effectively replace unhealthy habits.

Write down your concise plan of how you will replace your unhealthy habit with your new healthy habit.

Example: When I am confronted with a challenging task that often triggers stress eating, I will instead engage in this deep breathing exercise: three seconds in, pause for one second, five seconds out. I will repeat this sequence three to five times. I find this little breathing exercise to be a great instant stress reliever. It’s particularly useful because you can literally do it anywhere.

I will be reminded to pause and replace my unhealthy stress eating habit with the healthier deep breathing habit by putting a reminder on my refrigerator door where I will also see it.

My plan: Before opening my fridge, I will first check in to see if I’m actually hungry. If I am not, I will engage in a short breathing exercise.

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