By Andrea

We’ve been chatting about how habits are formed, how they affect your daily life and how to start making changes.  If you didn’t catch the previous two articles, you can read them here: How Habits Affect Your Life + How to Make them Work for You and How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 1. 

Simply put, habits are an unconscious response to a specific stimulus.  If you get cut off in traffic, what’s your automatic response?  If you’re feeling stressed, what’s your go-to solution?  If your pet or child comes to see you and wants a hug, what’s your response?

As humans, we respond to stimuli all day, every day.  This is especially true when we’re in a hurry or are trying to do more than one thing at a time or if we’re super stressed.

Change happens when we slow down to examine why we do what we do in certain situations and then we can decide if the response is something we want to keep doing or not.  Change doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes effort and action.  Action comes when there is space to act instead of react. 

Make it Attractive or Make it Unattractive

This is the second law of changing a Habit from Atomic Habits by James Clear.  If you make what you want to do attractive, you’re more likely to do it.  If you make it unattractive, you’re more likely to avoid it or do something different.

Make it Attractive

To make a new habit attractive, pair it with something you need or want to do.  The anticipation of a reward at the end of completing a task creates a spike of neurochemicals in the brain that motivates you to complete the task to get the reward.

If you’re trying to eat less of a certain food or type of food (ie: chocolate, cookies, chips, etc), making it attractive might seem like a counterintuitive idea but it works. 

Choose to make eating the chocolate, cookies, ice cream, bakery items, chips (or insert your favourite food here) an experience!  Pull out your best china if you have it - you know the stuff you save for holidays and special occasions.  If you don’t have plates or silverware like that, consider buying a few beautiful bowls, plates, cups and cutlery for this reason.  They can be smaller than your regular plates/cups than you’d use for your everyday meals.

When you wind down in the evening, take the time to set up an experience for yourself.  Buy the really good version of your favourite food.  Maybe these are cookies from a bakery (or the bakery section of the grocery store) or maybe it’s the more expensive chocolate or the more expensive ice cream.  Often these are made with better quality ingredients which means that they satisfy you faster.  

Take the time to add some fresh fruit, maybe a slice or two of good cheese to a plate with a couple squares of your favourite chocolate.  Pick foods (fruit, veg and healthy fats - cheese, nuts, seeds, etc.) that will pair well with your favourite food.  This gives you extra nutrients while also allowing you to enjoy your favourite food in moderation.

By making it attractive (your reward at the end of your workday), you’re more likely to savour the experience and gain more benefit from it rather than the behaviour causing more stress, guilt or shame.

You can also choose to swap the food aspect of your evening winddown ritual and add in a luxurious face mask and robe or perhaps a hand treatment while you watch your favourite tv show.  The evening ritual doesn’t have to be centered around food.  It can be anything you want that makes an hour of ‘me time’ feel luxurious and relaxing.

Make it Unattractive

Every craving has a surface level motivation and deeper underlying motivation.  Many of your deepest motivations are about meeting your basic human needs and wants like obtaining food and water, conserving energy, finding love and reproducing, connecting and bonding with others, winning social acceptance and approval, reducing uncertainty, achieving status and prestige, etc.

Stress can also impact your choices in a powerful way.  If you find yourself reaching for food after having a fight with your child or a loved one, you’re likely trying to fill the surface motivation to feel better and the deeper motivation of connecting with others and reducing uncertainty.

You’ve associated a solution (eat a particular food, go for a walk, do a particular thing) to solve the problem of feeling unhappy after a fight with someone you love.  This habit is now a subconscious response to provide a solution to this particular problem.  Your subconscious is incapable of determining if the solution it provided is a beneficial, detrimental or neutral solution.  All it knows is that it’s the solution that works for this problem.

Flipping how you think about habits can help you to stop habits that you’ve decided aren’t helping you become the person you want to be.  Flipping how you think about hard habits or habits you don’t necessarily enjoy can also help you invest in these habits.

Consider the statement: I have to workout.

If you don’t enjoy working out, this might feel heavy or hard.  If you enjoy working out, this might feel light and fun.  Using the words “have to” is usually associated with heavier feelings of not wanting to do the action or resistance.

If you change the statement to: I get to workout.

It becomes easier and permissive rather than hard and heavy.  Using the words “get to” is usually associated with lighter feelings and wanting to do the action and also anticipating the joy of the action which creates a cascade of neurochemicals being released which then increases the motivation of actually doing the action.

By focusing on the benefits associated with a habit you want to implement that’s an unattractive habit, it’s easier to feel the motivation to complete the action associated with the habit (ie: instead of I have to go for a walk/run; I get to go for a walk/run to so I can increase my endurance, reduce my stress and create some time for me).  

By focusing on the drawbacks associated with an unattractive habit you want to stop, it’s easier to find the motivation to replace the habit with something more beneficial.  Instead of having a cigarette because you need a break, think about all the health benefits of not smoking and choose to take a short walk to increase those benefits instead.

Next Steps

Choose the habit you want to change.  It’s best to choose a small thing so you can get an easy win and build some momentum.  Next, pick the method you think might work best to help you change that habit - are you going to Make it Obvious, Make it Invisible, Make it Attractive or Make it Unattractive?

If you’re finding that change in certain circumstances is hard, check back in with who you want to be and your reasons for making this change.  

If you’re looking for a little extra accountability, add a comment below and let me know what you’re working on changing.

Andrea

PS - Setting boundaries can also help you to make changes that you’re trying to make.  Using the word ‘No’ is huge when you need extra time and space to make changes.  Saying no really is an act of self care.  Take a moment and read more about it in Alicia’s article about ‘No’ as Self Care.