A strategy to change your habits for the better

I was tagged recently by Jenny and Erin who are on a quest for understanding. They are running a contest asking bloggers to post about habits (update: I won the contest!) Since this fits my blog perfectly, I accepted the challenge. The questions they ask are:

• How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?
  
• Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?
  
• What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

Well, I think we have a habitual life! I think most of what we do consists of habits, and that’s great, because we can choose what habits we want.

Habits rule our world
Let’s first take a look at what the dictionary says about habits:

hab·it
–noun

1. an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary;
2. customary practice or use;
3. a particular practice, custom, or usage;
4. a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality.

source: dictionary.com

Habits are an acquired behavior pattern that we follow involuntary. Scary right? In psychology this is also known as a conditioned behavior. It means we react to our circumstances in an acquired, conditioned standard way every time!

Now if we take a close look at it, our entire life is built upon these habits:

• If we see a red traffic light, we slow down
• If the phone rings, we pick it up
• If the email program plays the new mail sound, we hit alt-tab
• If the alarm clock wakes us, we get out of bed (or hit snooze again)
• If we fail at something, we head for the fridge and eat ice cream (or…)
• If someone starts yelling at you, you start to …
• If you trip over something, you turn around and start to …

Yep, there are blanks. You fill in the blanks, because we are not predestined to have the same responses. We have acquired different responses to similar stimuli, but if they formed a habit our response is an involuntary act of behavior, by nature.

Thankfully, we do have the ability to choose our response to a stimuli. We can choose not to execute automatic behavior, but we have to invest energy to do that. In Covey’s seven habits, this is Habit 1: Be proactive. We have the ability to create a gap between a stimulus and a response, and ironically, if we do this often enough it forms a new habit.

So there’s your answer to question one, Erin and Jenny. Habits have a major role in my daily life, and in yours! And we are able to choose our habits.

Intentional habit adoption
Do habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? They can form in both ways. But if we do not form them intentionally, then in time they will form unconsciously.

I make a difference in four categories of habit adoption:

• Conditioning
  We are conditioned to adopt a habit, by parents or teachers. The fact that we stop for a red light, or ask to go to the bathroom are habits we have learned, because people told us to do it like that.
• Copying
  We see someone do things in a certain way (mostly parents, siblings, teachers and other role models) and copy that behavior. If we get similar results, we repeat and it forms a habit.
• Experience
  We have experience that a certain way of doing things, leads to certain (more or less) predictable results. And we repeat that behavior, so it forms a habit.
• Choice
  We choose to do things in a certain way. We want certain results and design a way of ensuring that our actions lead to these results.

The first three are mostly unconscious in our daily lives. The fourth category is very intentional, and when we use Choice to form habits, the first three categories become tools we might use in changing our habits.

Strategy for changing habits
In short, you have to know what you want, where you are and how to get there. So to achieve habit change you have to know three things:

• What is your desired habit?
• What is your current habit?
• How do you get from current to desired?

You cannot stop a habit. You formed that habit for a reason, and it has benefits. One of the things I have learned from Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is that there are always benefits to every behavior. The key to finding the motivation for changing habits is to clearly have a vision of how your new habit is going to look like and how it is going to add more value to your life than your current habit. The way to finding out is:

1. Describe the desired habit
   You probably already know how to sketch out the new habit. Put it on paper. You need to formulate it positively, it should be a habit that you do want, not something that you don’t want.
2. Identify the upsides of your desired habit
   What benefits do you gain from the new habit? List them all!
3. Identify the downsides of your desired habit
   What negative side-effects might occur? List them all as well.
4. Identify the downsides of your current habit
   That should be easy, it’s the main reason for wanting to change this habit in the first place. Again, list them on paper.
5. Identify the upsides of your current habit
   There are always upsides to your current habit. The (unconscious) thought of losing these is a major factor in not succeeding in a habit change. Think about what you gain from your current behavior, and put them on paper as well. This might be very confrontational, but this is a very important step.
6. Check for value
   Verify whether the new habit takes care of the downside of your current habit and if it contains or outweighs the upside of your current habit, and whether it does not contain downsides that raise serious objections. If this is the case, go back to step one, and tweak your desired habit to take care of these objections.
7. Decide to change
   Once you’ve confirmed the better value of the desired habit, you have unconsciously already made the decision to change. If you did this part, your current habit will already begin to feel stupid as you know that there is a better way of doing it that will bring more to your life.
8. Make a social commitment
   When you have made the decision to change, tell people about it. This will make a social commitment, because you will tell people what your change is going to be, and why this change is good for you. By explaining it to other people, you will convince yourself even more that you need to change.
9. Find support for at least 30 days
   30 days is a typical period for a habit to change (no science to support this, but this is the common assumption). Those first 30 days you are reprogramming yourself. This takes energy, and finding the support in a group of people that are doing habit changes as well, can work very stimulating. Especially during the times where you’re environment is adapting to your new habit as well, you will experience things that ‘try to pull you back’. Find that support group.
10. Set a start date
    Decide when you start. It needn’t be tomorrow, but decide on a date and stick with it!
11. Implement
    This is where you put in the energy. In the beginning it will cost you energy, but the added benefits kick in after a couple of days and they will give you energy and energize you to change further.
12. Evaluate
    After 30 days evaluate the change. Review what you did in step 1 to 6 and see if there are things that need to be tweaked.
13. Celebrate
    Celebrate your success! Tell the world about it, give yourself a treat or do whatever it is that you do when you celebrate. In any way, confirm your success of changing by ending with another positive event.

And that’s all there is to it

If you want to see this in action, you can read about my habit change from staying up late to rising early in my Early Bird Challenge:

• Night owl taking a shot at being an early bird
• Start of the Early Bird Challenge
• Looking back on the first week of the Early Bird Challenge
• Looking back on the second week of the Early Bird Challenge
• Looking back on the third week of the Early Bird Challenge
• Looking back on the fourth week of the Early Bird Challenge
• Early Bird Challenge: recap with lessons learned