Habits are our energy

Let’s start with what a habit is. 

A habit is a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. The American Journal of Psychology defines a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience.” 

I think we all recognise there are times that our body seems to just do things on its own, Neuroscience research demonstrates a signal has already been sent to our reflexes to act before we become consciously aware of it. This is why we often find a piece of chocolate in our mouths without remembering deciding to eat it (honestly chocolate falls into my mouth all the time!), or more frighteningly when we arrive at our destination without remembering anything about the drive.

Unhelpful habits form when we find ourselves in familiar environments where we experience a particular negative emotion, that to begin with our mind searched for a solution for, and when it worked and calmed our emotions down, it becomes the go-to response. For example we are doing our emails, the content of which start to make us stressed, out of control and tense, so we bite our nails, something we can control. It eases the tension as we are taking action and that snap as we bite through a nail is satisfying, which is the reward. This happens a few times and before you know it whenever we read our emails, stressed or not we bite our nails.

Why do we do this, even when we get to the point of our fingers are sore and causing us pain? Why can’t we stop? This is where your brain has become ‘lazy’. To think clearly and make decisions our prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain involved) takes up a lot of energy (that’s why kids are often exhausted after school, it’s all that learning they have been doing). So it is always looking for short cuts for us, so we not having to use up energy and thinking time accessing and deciding things all the time. 

Our brain is trying to help us all the time so don't get mad at it - help it!

Our brain also is a pleasure seeking system where it hunts for rewards all the time so the quickest, easiest, known solution is what it automatically goes to.  

But if 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” - Aritotle

In order to achieve excellence we need to to look at what we do on a daily basis. We know we need good levels of energy to make the smart choices. Our energy has 4 elements to it physical, emotional, cognitive and mindful (or spiritual), ancient cultures have this concept in their religions and it features in Neuroscience today. Essentially these 4 areas make up our energy levels and we need to pay attention to all of them to keep a consistent and sustained energy force available to us to make wise decisions.  

In James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” he talks about the 4 key elements of a habit the cue, the craving our response and the reward. Building on these two frameworks and philosophies allows us to really break down the habits that limit us and replace them with better ones. 

By following this 4 step process you can break your automatic response and replace it with a new one.

1. Physical - what is happening, where is the place or setting of the habit, what activity are you doing and what time of day does it occur or is it tied to the activity? These are the cues.

Be really clear about what is triggering your habit so you can plan an alternative action.

2. Emotional - what are you feeling at the time? What emotions are being brought up? - Your craving.

Practice recognising the emotions early, acknowledge what you are feeling and distance yourself from them.

3. Cognitive - what are you doing to elevate these emotions? - Your response

Come up with ideas for a new response and pick the easiest.

4. Mindful - what is the release you are getting? What new emotion do you feel - The reward 

Put in place an immediate reward for your new behaviour, a short term one (after 10, 20 and 30 days) that’s a little bigger then visualise what you will look like after you have done this habit for a year, what will it feel like and what will have changed in your life and use this when you meditate.

Remember it takes 30 days to establish a new habit and our minds will be always looking for the easy option. So if you’ve decided to take the stairs rather than the escalator you need to reward yourself in the short term to keep with the new harder way of doing things.

If you need help gaining energy so you can become the best version of yourself, maybe you never seem to make progress on your projects that would progress your business or career or it could be your sick of not having the energy to have quality time and energy to do things at the weekend.  

I'm here to help through my mentoring program to achieve Neurofitness in just 3 months.