How to build or break a habit May 25, 2006
Seth Godin recently mentioned making and breaking habits. As humans, habits are what keep us alive. Almost every behaviour you do is either a habit, or built on habits. From walking and talking to putting on your socks and combing your hair.
While it is possible to break habits, it’s much easier to just replace them with a new one. Offer a better option, and you get a better result. When you were much younger, you learned and built a crawling habit. After a while you learned the more effective transport habit of walking. Regardless of your age now, you can still go back to your crawling habit. As the old saying goes – it’s just like riding a bike.
Of course, knowing the right stop where to insert the new habit is the challenge. To find it, I usually start with the question – “What is the real or imagined positive value that you get from this habit?”
If you were marketing a new product, and wanting to build a new habit in your customers, that question needs a little modifying. You may want to use the Creating Passionate Users mantra of helping them to “kick ass”.
Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Gladwell, Learning, Persuasion, Psychology
- Posted in : Business, Marketing, Persuasion, Psychology
- Author : Michael
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For another take on building good habits have a look at The Good Habits Blog.
My habit is manicure nails which is more than a habit a routine .
Forcing yourself to get rid of your bad habits with sheer discipline usually doesn’t work. Our bodies are just to hung up on our bad habits. Then of course the brain does its bit to make sure that the status quo is maintained.
Face it:
• Pills, powders and patches can not change your habits.
• How to books can not insert the motivation you need to get up after you fall down.
• Lectures and seminars will not implant you with the determination you need to actually do what you need to do to reach success.
• Exercise equipment can not force you to actually use it.
• Punishment does not guarantee that you will stop doing what ever you have been doing most of your life.
So what is needed is a break through in the cerebral area. That part of you which make decisions namely your brain.
For convenience sake let us look at eating habits: Loads of people love eating sweets and salty snacks, even healthy people.
The difference is the healthy people have got a grip on how much they eat. They know when to stop, even if they adore the taste of ice cream, chocolate or cheese and onion chips on their taste buds.
So unless you have a method of finding out what food means to you on a deep rooted level, your automatic response is never going to change. Even if you manage to seriously cut down for a few days, you will soon be eating the same as before.
In my experience the best way to do this is to constantly replace your old messages with new ones. I guess you could call it – affirmations. That’s why they can be wildly successful when repeated over and over. But watch out – to have full effect they must be properly constructed. If new messages are created without actually replacing the old ones it is like having a bath in dirty water to get clean.
So you would create an affirmation that goes something like this: How ever I am feeling right now, food is not the answer.
Then you need to give your brain another message because even though you have told it food is not the answer you need to give it an answer about food because at some stage you will need to eat to get nutrients. But you want healthy food instead of junk. So now you would formulate a message that goes something like this: My body feels great now that I am eating fresh fruit and vegetables. If you say this enough times you will believe it and do it.
What works best for me is to make a recording and play it over and over. I have conquered eating junk food, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and not exercising my body this way.
At this stage you may be thinking,” what enjoyment is there in life without any of those pleasurable things?” All I can tell you is that I have never felt or looked better. I am now using this technique to overcome procrastination. You know, like when you know you have to do your tax or mow the lawn but for some obscure reason you just don’t get around to doing it.
Claudia,
Thanks for your comments. I’m not a big fan of affirmations for several reasons.
1) Most people don’t know the correct way to structure the words they use and achieve the results they want. (For example, taking your initial suggestion: “How ever I am feeling right now, food is not the answer.” still focuses on food, rather than what you want more.)
2) Words by themselves change nothing. If they did, all we’d have to do is ask for what we want and it would arrive. Even if you live a life using the law of attraction, you’re doing much much more than just saying the words. There are specific steps, along with the words, that need to be in place.
3) Some teachers of affirmations describe saying things that are not true. This is a brute force attempt at changing. I think of this as much like nagging your best friend to change. In the end they so resent being harassed that they do exactly the opposite of what you want. But there are ways to request even negative things to achieve the results you want.
4) As an addition to #3, I regularly work with people who say what they want, but then immediately negate it with their body language. For example saying “I want to eat only healthy food” and then their face shows disgust. In this case they consciously believe (at best) the statement, but unconsciously strengthen the desire for non-healthy food. Removing and changing these unconscious desires and intentions have to be done before any affirmation will work.
Regardless of all that, affirmations do sometimes work. You’re a good example!