Our brains work to minimize risk using minimum energy. From an evolutionary point of view, homo sapiens have flourished by minimizing risk even though we are capable of setting great goals and acting consciously to achieve them. We have survived to get to this point in our lives if we repeat today what we did yesterday we will survive yet another day. Our brains are working to ensure we execute the habit cycle. If we encounter a situation we have never seen, our brains work to create a new habit and train as quickly as possible to create a habit.

A habit is a conditioned response to a cue. For example, the alarm on your bedside table generates a cue that drives a reaction. Let’s assume the normal reaction to the alarm sounding is to snooze the alarm. You may not even be conscious of the steps you take to snooze the alarm.

1. Alarm sounds. You do not even decide your next step. You reach over to your nightstand, feel the alarm clock, conveniently consistently located so as not force a determined search.
2. You grasp the clock and without the need to look at the clock, find the appropriate button and press it. Blissfully the annoying sound ends, and you doze back into a light unfulfilling sleep.
3. You may repeat this cycle once or twice more, until your conscious finally successfully breaks the cycle, reminding you of the negative consequences of being late; being stuck in traffic, questioning glances from coworkers, another warning from the boss about being late for meetings, and so forth.

It is unlikely you planned for this behavior. Hitting the snooze button three times every morning does not usually arise from a New Year’s Resolution! Perhaps, you developed the habit in college, when studying left you to sleep deprived and you were willing to risk being a few minutes late to your early morning class. Perhaps when you joined the 9 to 5 grind you failed to account for the consistent wake-up call when you met your friends the previous evening.

The Habit Cycle consists of 4 stages; The Cue, The Craving, The Response, and the Reward. In this case, the cue is the alarm, the craving is a few more blissful minutes of sleep, the response is slapping the snooze button, and the reward is 8 more minutes of sleep. The vast majority of our actions are driven by the Habit Cycle.(Duhigg)

Sensing the Cue, the brain anticipates the future reward and develops a craving. Simultaneously the brain creates a stress response creating the action necessary to achieve the reward it craved; this is actually similar to the “fight or flight” response. Sure enough, you leap into action to respond and keep responding as long as the craving persists, usually until the whole bag of peanuts has been consumed.

If this is the habit you want to convert, there must be some goal driving the change. Do you feel like the period you snooze is not restful, and you want to set the alarm later? Are you trying to give yourself more time in the morning to meditate or exercise? This will drive the reward you want to receive for making the change. The more compelling this reward is for you, the more quickly you will crave the reward. This will increase the likelihood you will intervene in the habit on a consistent basis. It is critical the new planned activity becomes an integral part of the response to the cue in order to drive the craving.

As we have discussed in previous posts, it is ideal if achieving this reward is intrinsically motivating. This can be improving your sense of autonomy, by being to drive your own schedule and take a few more precious minutes for yourself. It could increase your sense of competence and mastery if your response is to start a yoga routine with your extra 16 minutes. These are all opportunities to give your brain some help in diverting the habit to something that becomes something important and tangible for you.

So, let’s analyze this habit cycle to consider what changes could be made to disrupt the habit to allow your logical brain to step in and execute a new better response.

In many cases, you will need to create other habits that will enable this habit change. For example, the previous example implied that you were prepared to act when the alarm sounded. If you are planning to do a yoga routine, prepare your exercise gear the night before. Try to ensure that any disincentives to getting out of bed to have been removed. I found it wise to set the thermostat to increase the temperature in the room before rising since I loved burrowing into the blankets to stay warm. These enabling habits will allow you to feel the reward of the changed habit more immediately.

Conclusion

The Habit Loop is very influential in our responses to events in our environment. These events or cues stimulate cravings that drive us to perform some action in order to satisfy the craving and receive the reward we anticipate. In order to make improvements in our lives, we need to have a vision for what objectives we have and what goals will move us toward them. We then need to evaluate the habits that affect those goals. These habits need to be analyzed to identify the cues, the cravings, the reactions and anticipated rewards that comprise each habit loop. These habits are not necessarily good or bad for us, but they identify existing loops we can use to create better habits.

The most effective approach is to replace components of the habit loop by other more desirable components. This requires consistency and self-control; this approach can fail if the thinking part of your brain fails to act in time before the automatic response occurs. This approach will convert many habits into more desirable habits over time. It has been suggested that most habits can be changed in as little as a few weeks to several months. In my personal experience, it takes me about 60 days to successfully rewire a habit. It is important to remain diligent since the neural pathways of the original habit have not been destroyed. I have been known to succumb to original craving on occasion, but fortunately, I am sensitive to the cravings and responses and usually restore the new habit successfully.

Bibliography

Duhigg, C. (n.d.). The Power of Habit. Random House.