What is one thing that you do everyday without being conscious?
Is brushing your teeth, pushing the snooze button, or even just laying down in bed for that extra minute? Well that’s most likely a habit that you didn’t even know about. Habits are in simple terms are routine of behaviors that happens subconscious. It’s what we do without needing to think about.
Question
Have you thought of putting on your shoes on, put on your tie, or even walk your daily path to school? Those are most likely habits that you have made. So why I talking about habits? Well in the book ”The Power Of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. It’s said that about 40 percent of our actions are based on our habits. That means about half of actions are based on our habits. So if you have knack to procrastinate every time you have to do work then that’s most your bad habits showing.
So How Do Habits Form?
Well after watching many YouTube videos online. I came to conclusion that habits are formed by this simple formula. I know you might have some bad experiences with formulas in math but this one is important to learn about.
It’s goes something like this. The formula is Cue+Behavior=Reward. You keep on doing this over and over again then you’ll have formed your habit. Easy enough right? So now you know how habits are and work. What if you got a bad habit? Can you erase it? The answer to that quesion would be yes and no.
Yes you can build new habits to counteract against the bad ones however you can’t erase the bad ones away. Habits are subconscious actions. So even if you want to not do it, you tend to do it anyways. It’s not you but your habits( So basically you in unconscious will) Because the brain is very lazy so it naturally does it. So how can fight against a bad habit? You just build new ones to overwrite your bad ones.
For Example.
Think of a dirt road. There’s dirt everywhere and path isn’t clear. So you just start walking, you walk and walk then a certain path forms by. Your brain will use this path every time you do a certain action.
The cue, then the behavior would be walking then reward is the destination you’re reaching for. When you start to walk this certain path. Overtime it will habit the road which is knowns as the habit.
Easy enough to understand no for the solution. Maybe you didn’t like how this road was taking you when then. You just need to go on a different route instead. In order to follow through with this without going back that certain path.
You will need to understand the formula. Cue+Behavior=Reward. You will need to mimic this formula in order to create the habit you’re building with.
Luckily it’s not as hard as it sounds. It’s actually quite simple. by doing this, you’ll be able to create your good habits in matter of weeks. I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say that I want to have fit body. I would need to workout everyday in order to achieve this but I can’t get into so easily. So I would need to create a Cue. The cue would be an alarm then the behavior would be going out to workout my body. After that I would need a reward. This reward can be a snickers bar. I do this for a couple of days and I would then have a new habit.
Why A Snickers Bar?
The reward doesn’t really matter but it should be something that you would enjoy and since it’s your brain. it should be something primal as possible. What are those actions? Survival, sex, food. Since food is the easiest to obtain. Just use that for your activity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, habits are what keep our bodies moving in autopilot so in that case why not program it for better directions.