The Psychology of Habit

On why habit is about your dependence on habit rather than dependence on the object of habit

When we consider habits, we usually think of activity that is repeated by us and the psychology of habit would tell us why we repeat our activities and develop habits as we grow up. Habits are thus repeated patterns of behaviour and activities that we are conditioned to carry out and could develop over many years and habits that have developed over many years are more likely to be stronger than those developed recently or in a few years. So habits that we develop as children are more likely to remain with us all our lives than habits that we develop as adults. So the strength or potency of such habits would be directly related to how long we have been having these patterns of behaviour.

So when we wake up in the morning and brush our teeth, this is behaviour we all developed as children. Now we have to think, what happens when we try to stop these habits? What happens if we wake up and don't brush our teeth? Apart from the fact that we could end up with bad breath, there are actual psychological effects of physical and emotional or social discomfort when we don't follow one of our regular habits. Brushing your teeth is an example, another could be when you enter your apartment and switch the TV or computer on immediately after reaching home. If you stop doing that, you suddenly feel uncomfortable about your immediate ambience, even if it's your own home, as if something is missing from your life. Suppose your TV or your laptop has broken down, you cannot exercise your habit and you feel depressed. We humans are slaves of these patterns of behaviour and that is why habits are an absolutely central part of our existence. This depression that we feel, when we cannot exercise our habit could be considered as a consequence of 'habit obstruction'. Thus the habit obstruction effect could have a serious impact on our emotional, social and personal lives.

When habit obstruction effect is long term, that is when your laptop is broken for weeks or months, so you can't switch it on when you enter your house or apartment, the habit obstruction effect will extend to habit starvation and after a few weeks of habit obstruction, when you set into the habit starvation effect, you might as well begin to subconsciously forget your habit. So habit starvation could trigger some kind of amnesia of your habitual behaviour and you forget the habit. It's all very nice but then not so simple, because you might in this case have some sort of habit displacement and develop some other kind of habit. Means what? It means instead of switching on your laptop when you enter your apartment, you start cuddling your dog or your spouse or whoever lives with you. So you develop a new habit of giving a cuddle to someone once you enter your apartment. But this could have a negative effect if this object of cuddle is not around. So you again go back to habit obstruction-habit starvation effects by the time you get your new laptop and redevelop your old habit. So habit development (also known as habit formation), habit obstruction, habit starvation, habit displacement works as a cycle and in some cases we just keep continuing with our habits when there is no obstruction or starvation effect.

So what does habit do? Habits make us dependent on these patterns of behaviour. So, psychologically, we are not exactly tied to the objects of habit but rather to the habits. You see, when you enter your house and hug your dog, it is not so much about loving your spouse, but more about your habit and your dependence on your habit. Of course, your spouse doesn't realise this and of course this is good for you. We are emotionally and psychologically attached to our habits. Habits give us short term pleasure, but nevertheless these short term pleasures are important for our existence. Thus we humans could be considered as habit dependent individuals. In our daily lives, we overlook how habit underlies almost every aspect of our activities and all activities our programmed mentally to be performed or carried out in a certain way and this is our habit.

So, how do psychological theories fit in to explain the psychology of habit? Habit can be explained with conditioning and could explain human behaviour. Whereas behaviourists could explain habit with conditioning theories and suggest that habit is generally behaviour that is conditioned in a certain way, so a dog would develop a habit of eating or feel hungry when we hears a bell because he has developed that habit to associate the bell and the food.

So are habits about associating things or activities? Habits are usually about association, which means it involves two or more factors when it is manifested. So you wake up in the morning and as a habit wash your face, so the two factors here are waking up and washing your face. So waking up in the morning a habit? Yes and it again involves the internal perception of the time of day and waking up and thus there are two factors here as well. Usually habits will be about association of two or more factors and this is what psychological theories of conditioning have explained with stimulus-response equations. So in this case, habit works as a response to certain stimulus. Behaviourism could almost habit but would not be able to explain the effects of developing habits and effects of habit obstruction or habit starvation. This is because behaviourism does not consider mind or our emotional nature but only considers human behaviour sans the human mind.

So behaviouristic theories would not adequately explain habit and cannot explain why habits are difficult to abandon and what emotional impact habit obstruction or habit starvation could have on us. For this we need to understand that our mind is prone to some sort of mental conditioning.

In order to understand habit and its impact, we need to go beyond behaviourism. We have to understand why when we cannot engage in one of our habits, we feel discomfort and depressed. You have a glass of warm milk every night and suddenly you stop having this milk and then your body feels discomfort and emotionally or mentally you might also feel uncomfortable. If like me, you are into classical music and go to sleep with Beethoven or Schubert every night, you will probably stay wide awake if someone plays hard rock. We humans are creatures of habit, we are attuned to certain physical and emotional routines and when there is a change in routine, our body and mind are equally affected, whether it's a glass of milk, a kiss, a laptop, a dog, a partner or the toothpaste in the morning.

When you feel emotionally dependent on someone or something, you tend to think that you are dependent on that object or that person, but you are not. You are only dependent on your own habit. It is not a bad thing at all, it is the very foundation of society and family as we all back home at night after a day's work and that is our habit.

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How to Get What You Want in 2017

It is almost 2017 and time to start thinking about those New Year's resolutions but the problem with New Year's resolutions is that so few people actually achieve them. Why is this and what can you do to make sure you actually get what you want in 2017?

1. Write Down Your New Year's Resolutions and Set SMART goals
The first step towards achieving what you want is to actually write it down and turn resolutions into goals. An unwritten resolution is quickly forgotten and unless you have some written, specific goals chances are you are just going to be wandering. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. In other words, say exactly what you want to achieve, by when and have ways of measuring how you are getting along.

2. Develop Habits and Consistency
Another problem that often occurs with New Year's resolutions is that people do not form habits and develop consistency in those actions that are going to get them there. For instance, if you want to lose weight, it needs to become a habit to exercise and eat healthy foods. They say it takes 21 days to develop a habit but it is actually better to consistently stick to it for 63 days to ensure that the habit is well entrenched into your lifestyle before taking any breaks. Not all habits need to be done every day but you do need to be consistent in doing those things that will get you towards your goal.

3. Track and Measure
Set smaller goals and ways of measuring how you are making progress towards your major goal and then track these. Start by tracking those habits that it will take to get you there - how many times have you exercised this week for example. As you are tracking you will see how even the small steps count and will be more motivated to keep moving towards your major goal.

4. Stay Positive
Your mindset has a huge role to play in whether you are going to achieve your goals or not. Always try to remain positive and think positively. Focus on what it is you want but don't beat yourself up over setbacks or slip ups, you will get times where things don't go perfectly or you may have a setback but just keep going and you will get there.

Instead of just setting some New Year's Resolutions for this next year why not turn them into actionable goals, develop habits that will help you achieve them and track these consistently. Keep positive and all the best for achieving whatever it is you want to achieve in 2017.

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42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself - Part 3

This is Part 3 of 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself

21. Quit a bad habit. Are there any bad habits you can lose? Oversleeping? Not exercising? Being late? Slouching? Nail biting? Smoking? Here’s some help on how you can quit a bad habit.

22. Cultivate a new habit. Some good new habits to cultivate include reading books (#1), waking up early (#8), exercising (#9), reading a new personal development article a day (#40) and meditating. Is there any other new habit you can cultivate to improve yourself?

23. Avoid negative people. As Jim Rohn says, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. Wherever we go, there are bound to be negative people. Don’t spend too much of your time around them if you feel they drag you down.

24. Learn to deal with difficult people. There are times when there are difficult people you can’t avoid, such as at your workplace, or when the person is part of your inner circle of contacts. Learn how to deal with them. These people management skills will go a long way in working with people in the future.

25. Learn from your friends. Everyone has amazing qualities in them. It’s up to how we want to tap into them. With all the friends who surround you, they are going to have things you can learn from. Try thinking of a good friend right now. Think about just one quality they have which you want to adopt. How can you learn from them and adopt this skill for yourself? Speak to them if you need to – for sure, they will be more than happy to help!

26. Start a journal. Journaling is a great way to gain better self-awareness. It’s a self-reflection process. As you write, clarify your thought process and read what you wrote from a third person’s perspective, you gain more insights about yourself. Your journal can be private or an online blog. I use my personal development blog as a personal journal too and I’ve learned a lot about myself through the past year of blogging.

27. Start a blog about personal development. To help others grow, you need to first be walking the talk. There are expectations of you, both from yourself and from others, which you have to uphold. I run The Personal Excellence Blog, where I share my personal journey and insights on how to live a better life. Readers look toward my articles to improve themselves, which enforces to me that I need to keep improving, for myself and for the people I’m reaching out to.

28. Get a mentor or coach. There’s no faster way to improve than to have someone work with you on your goals. Many of my clients approach me to coach them in their goals and they achieve significantly more results than if they had worked alone.

29. Reduce the time you spend on chat programs. I realized having chat programs open at default result in a lot of wasted time. This time can be much better spent on other activities. The days when I don’t get on chat, I get a lot more done. I usually disable the auto start-up option in the chat programs and launch them when I do want to chat and really have the time for it.

30. Learn chess (or any strategy game). I found chess is a terrific game to learn strategy and hone your brainpower. Not only do you have fun, you also get to exercise your analytical skills. You can also learn strategy from other board games or computer games, such as Othello, Chinese Chess, WarCraft, and so on.

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How to Achieve Your Goals Easily

In the last 6 months, I’ve experimented with a simple strategy that has improved my work and my health.

Using this one basic idea, I have made consistent progress on my goals every single week without incredible doses of willpower or remarkable motivation.

Today, I want to share how I use this strategy and how you can apply it to your own life to improve your health and your work.

 

The Problem with How We Usually Set Goals

If you’re anything like the typical human, then you have dreams and goals in your life. In fact, there are probably many things — large and small — that you would like to accomplish.
That’s great, but there is one common mistake we often make when it comes to setting goals. (I know I’ve committed this error many times myself.)

The problem is this: we set a deadline, but not a schedule.

We focus on the end goal that we want to achieve and the deadline we want to do it by. We say things like, “I want to lose 20 pounds by the summer” or “I want to add 50 pounds to my bench press in the next 12 weeks.”

The problem with this is that if we don’t magically hit the arbitrary timeline that we set in the beginning, then we feel like a failure … even if we are better off than we were at the start. The end result, sadly, is that we often give up if we don’t reach our goal by the initial deadline.

I’ve mentioned this idea multiple times before. For example, in making the mistake of putting performance goals before your identity or in choosing life–changing transformations over daily lifestyle choices.

Here’s the good news: there’s a better way and it’s simple.

The Power of Setting a Schedule, Not a Deadline

In my experience, a better way to approach your goals is to set a schedule to operate by rather than a deadline to perform by.

Instead of giving yourself a deadline to accomplish a particular goal by (and then feeling like a failure if you don’t achieve it), you should choose a goal that is important to you and then set a schedule to work towards it consistently.

That might not sound like a big shift, but it is.

How to Achieve Your Goals: The Idea in Practice

Most of the time, I try to be a practitioner of my ideas and not just someone who shares their opinion, so allow me to explain this strategy by using two real examples from my own life.

Example 1: Writing

As you know, I publish a new article every Monday and Thursday. Since my first article on November 12, 2012, I’ve never missed a scheduled date. Sometimes the article is shorter than expected, sometimes it’s not as compelling as I had hoped, and sometimes it’s not as useful as it could be … but it gets out to the world and into your inbox.

The results of this simple schedule have been amazing. Our little community has grown, seemingly without effort. We now have over 1,100 people (welcome friends!) who are committed to living a healthy life and who are actively supporting one another. Onwards to 5,000 strong!

Imagine if I had set a deadline for myself instead, like “get 1,000 subscribers in 12 weeks.” There’s no way I would have written every Monday and Thursday and if I didn’t reach my goal, then I would have felt like a failure.

Instead, we are slowly building one of the most incredible communities online. (By the way, thank you for all of the emails, tweets, and messages on fat loss, lifting weights, living longer, and forming better habits. Keep them coming! I’m always happy to get your questions and I’ll do my best to help however I can.)

Example 2: Exercise

Back in August, I decided that I wanted to do 100 pushups in a row with strict form. When I tried it the first time, I only got 36.

In the past, I might have set a deadline for myself: “Do 100 pushups by December 31st.”

Instead, I decided to set a schedule for my workouts. I started doing pushup workouts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So far, the only workouts I’ve missed were on long travel days from this trip in Istanbul and this trip in San Francisco.

I have no total pushup goal for any single workout. The goal is simply to do the workout. Just like I have no goal for any single article that I write. The goal is to publish the article.

The result, of course, is that after doing 77 pushup workouts I’ve made a lot of progress. If you’re interested, you can see every workout here.

Focus on the Practice, Not the Performance

Do you see how the two examples above are different than most goals we set for ourselves?
In both cases (writing and exercise), I made consistent progress towards my goals not by setting a deadline for my performance, but by sticking to a schedule.

Productive and successful people practice the things that are important to them on a consistent basis. The best weightlifters are in the gym at the same time every week. The best writers are sitting down at the keyboard every day. And this same principle applies to the best leaders, parents, managers, musicians, and doctors.

The strange thing is that for top performers, it’s not about the performance, it’s about the continual practice.

The focus is on doing the action, not on achieving X goal by a certain date.

The schedule is your friend. You can’t predict when you’ll have a stroke of genius and write a moving story, paint a beautiful portrait, or make an incredible picture, but the schedule can make sure that you’re working when that stroke of genius happens.

You can’t predict when your body feels like setting a new personal record, but the schedule can make sure that you’re in the gym whether you feel like it or not.

It’s about practicing the craft, not performing at a certain level. (We’re talking about practice. Not a game, not a game. Practice.)

If you want to be the type of person who accomplishes things on a consistent basis, then give yourself a schedule to follow, not a deadline to race towards.

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