When it comes to the topic of negative health habits, the first thing to note about changing habitual behaviours is that it is difficult and there are no promises that it is anything but difficult. The process may take months to fully overcome the habit depending on the type of habit and the length of time the habit has rooted itself into a person’s brain.
But it is important for people to be aware of this fact so that giving up on change is less likely, so that when relapse happens their motivation is not destroyed by the oncoming guilt that inevitably follows.
James Clear, author of international best seller ‘Atomic Habits’, writes in his book that a habit is “a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically”. This is a crucial point to understand before undertaking any habitual change as while we may perceive ourselves to be rational beings we are not most of the time.
Most of the time we are driven by instincts and habitual behaviour, not reasoning, in fact instinctual motivation will often drive our reasoning rather than the inverse, as Jonathan Haidt’s book ‘The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion’ suggests.
Clear explains that the formation of negative health habits, or any habit, requires conscious rational thought in choosing in whether you indulge in a behaviour or not, and following this a person will repeat the behaviour and over time automaticity of the behaviour is created which can then be described as a habit, a behaviour or set of behaviours which we do without much conscious thought at all.
There are 4 stages in Clear’s model of a habit, Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward, and being aware of this basic format may be helpful in identifying and overcoming negative health habits by taking it away from being “I think I should stop smoking” to something more objective, something dissectible.
Clear uses this structure to identify what he describes as “The 4 Laws of Behaviour Change” to break bad habits:
- Make it Invisible (cue) – Remove the cue
- Make it Unattractive (craving) – Remind yourself why it is bad
- Make it Difficult (response) – Create obstacles to completing the behaviour
- Make it Unsatisfying (reward) – Apply a form of negative response to the behaviour
This structure can be inverted when attempting to form new positive habits instead.
Being aware of the above is the first steps in being able to reflect upon one’s behaviour, to edit it like a person would a document. Identify the stages in the habit to make the necessary adjustments. Sounds easy? Perhaps not.
The above is a good foundation to start behaviour change but a person may still require the tools and tactics they can use to make such adjustments. Firstly, a person needs to identify the negative behaviour that is affecting them, which can be difficult as most people are simply unaware that what they are doing is not helping them.
This is where seeking feedback from family, friends, or health professionals can be a very useful tactic as, although the person is the one being affected, those around them will often identify issues first.
A simple way to think of this is if a person is far away from a drawing it will be difficult for them to see what has been drawn, and if they are too close to the drawing they will still not be able to understand what has been drawn. Essentially, sometimes we can be too close to a problem to identify it.
This is why regular self-reflection is so important, it is the process of looking at yourself as if you were another person, taking few steps back.
It’s often not easy to detect bad habits and, even when we do, it can be difficult to identify the Cues, Cravings, Response, and Reward. This is where journaling/note taking can help. Once a person has identified their negative behaviour, they can then keep track of when they do it.
Using smoking as an example, when a person smokes a cigarette, they are aware that they are doing so, this means they can then write how they were feeling, what they were doing, who they were with, and what they were thinking before they decided to light up their habit.
Doing this means the person is taking these critical few steps back away from themselves to evaluate their behaviour objectively. They can then go on to start recognising patterns to their behaviour.
Perhaps every time they smoke they realise it is always at 17:00 after they finish work, which would then mean they have identified the cue, they can be prepared for when the craving sensation arises, they could choose to leave the lighter at home to stop the response, and they could replace the reward with something different, using nicotine replacement products instead of cigarettes or something else they enjoy, perhaps when they don’t smoke after work they go to a driving range for a bit of a release instead. This is all deeply linked with B.F. Skinner’s behaviourist theory of operant conditioning and needs to be person centred.
SMARTER goals are an immediate go-to when a person is trying to achieve something and is another process of breaking a task down into smaller bite size pieces that make it feel much less daunting. So, when a person has Identified the details of their behaviour, they can then move forward on making a plan to address the negative habit. This can make the entire process quicker and easier, albeit hardly ever quick nor easy.
Ultimately, an important thing to know is that this is a process that people need to go through and there is no set timeline in achieving habitual behaviours, they are created so that are autonomous which results In them being very difficult to change.
However, they can change and they will change when people have the motivation and commitment in doing so.
