Hacking our Habits

Is there a habit you have that you have been trying to break, but can’t.  Do you want to start running a couple of miles a day, but feel too exhausted to follow through?  Do you want to implement a daily journaling practice, but find yourself scrolling instead? Sometimes our brains and bodies just don’t do what we want them to do. I’ve found myself asking myself a question recently: why is it so hard to break habits? James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: An easy and proven way to break old habits and make new ones, has written extensively on the science of habit formation. For many of us, there are a few things that come to mind when we think about things that we do repeatedly even if we don’t really want to. We’ve all been there. It probably feels like you’re stuck in a cycle, wanting to let go of the thing that’s holding you back but ultimately feeling stuck and hitting a wall where the initial surge of motivation is lost. In this post we’ll be breaking down habit formation and ending with how we can take what we know about habit formation and apply it to our spiritual health.

How do we change our habits?

• What is a habit?

Habits are powerful. They shape who we are and where we take our lives. Our lives are made up of moments where we have thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (where we take action on the thoughts and feelings).  As a person of faith, I also believe that regardless of the things I do, I am beloved. This identity is unchanging so no matter how stuck I feel, this identity gives me hope and the agency that I can change my mind,  moreover, there is growing evidence that our brains are wired  to continuously evolve and adapt. Our habits, the things we do repeatedly day in and day out, influence our spiritual health and well being. There’s hope in knowing this because it gives us the ability to reimagine our habits in light of the person we hope to become. We have the capacity to choose practices and habits that pull us closer to God, but we have to first become aware of what we hope to leave behind.

Clear says that “every action that we take is like a vote for the type of person we wish to become.” When we think about our habits as being a part of who we are, it becomes easier to follow through on them. So let’s take a step back. Is the way that you address problems in your life actually helpful to you in addressing  problems? To take it one step further, is the way you are practicing your faith, leading you towards a healthier spirituality? To answer these questions, we have to look at how our line of thinking is impacting who we are, the processes we are using to accomplish our goals, and finally the outcome or external result. 

• How are habits formed?

Habits are reinforced through 4 things: cues, cravings, responses, and rewards. There’s a reason we do the things we do, so let’s talk about the psychology that can help. Let’s get specific and use an example of someone (aka myself) as I am attempting to curb my coffee intake and get better sleep.

The Habit Loop 

1. Cue → I walk past my favorite coffee shop on the way home from work and smell the fresh ground coffee beans. I didn’t get much sleep the night before and find myself desperate for a little caffeine boost.
2. Craving → I remember how much I enjoy the taste of their coffee and how nice it would be to have an energy boost.
3. Response → I decide to just go in and look around but as I’m waiting in line, the craving for coffee grows. By the time I get to the front of the line, I find myself ordering coffee.
4. Reward → I get the enjoyment of sipping my cup of coffee and feel the temporary increase in energy.

This is a habit loop I have found myself in. A few months ago I decided to stop buying coffee after 2 pm because I knew it was affecting my sleep. Now to be fair, I wasn’t drinking just one cup of coffee (it was closer to 2-3 per day), but it was a habit I couldn’t kick. I felt stuck in a cycle of wanting to cut back on coffee but not feeling like I could get through the afternoon without one. That cup of coffee might seem like something small and relatively harmless. But the decision for me to stop was not just about the decision to drink coffee—it was the decision to prioritize the temporary increase in energy and productivity that came from that afternoon coffee instead of prioritizing my overall well being—my quality of sleep, my stress levels, and anxiety.

3. Acknowledging the “Why”

That cup of coffee was so much more than just coffee, it says something about my values. There’s a reason I was reaching for the afternoon boost each day. The purpose of the example above is to show that this kind of habit cycle could be applied to any number of things we do on a daily basis—we may think these small choices are minuscule, but every one of our decisions likely speaks to an underlying part of who we are or something we value. I value being productive and in grad school it’s often a necessity, but I got caught up in the temporary motivation to get everything done at the expense of my sleep and anxiety. Before moving on to the next section, stop and think about some of the decisions you make on a daily basis—brushing your teeth, washing your hands, walking your dog, scrolling social media, reading a news article, making dinner vs ordering takeout…every day we have to decide things, yet we don’t always stop to evaluate our why behind it. So stop, grab a piece of paper, and try to identify your “why” behind one thing you do on a daily basis. If you’re feeling up to it, try to identify why you do what you do for one day this week. Reflect on if your decisions are actually lining up with your long term goals and values.

4. How long does it actually take to create a new habit?

Growing up my parents would often tell me that it takes 21 days to make a new habit. They often applied this concept to things like flossing or making my bed every morning. You might even find yourself repeating this line to your kids too. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to instill some good science into your kids’ lives from a young age. As a budding psychologist, I’m all for it, but let’s make sure we’re setting up the next generation for success. The challenge is that the number 21 is actually not a scientific fact. In the 1950s Maxwell Maltz found that after he performed plastic surgery on his clients, it took them about 21 days to recognize and accept the new mental image of their newly adapted limb. Maltz went on to write about this extensively and this is how the myth of the 21 days to create a new habit came to be.

However, what we now know is that it takes a minimum of two months (66 days) before a behavior becomes automatic. In other words, believing that after 21 days, the habit should be sticking is setting us up for failure. It’s also important to note that scientifically it takes a MINIMUM of two months, but depending on the habit, its addictive qualities, and the amount of time we’ve used it as a means of coping, it could take much longer to break this habit and replace it with a more optimal one.

• Change takes Time: Be kind to your mind

Regardless of how long it takes to create a new habit, even once we have created a new habit, we cannot expect that we will be perfect at following through on the habit at all times. We will fail, like I have done many times in trying to cut back on my caffeine intake. It’s important to be gracious and kind to our minds as we embark to create new neural networks that fire together. Our brains have an amazing ability to adapt to new stimuli but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy for them to adapt. The research suggests that when trying to form a new habit, missing the habit once does not have any bearing on the habit formation process overall if we can continue to implement the habit in light of the perceived setback. 

Consistency is our best friend when it comes to creating new habits. While we have all likely benefited from the initial rush of motivation that comes with the idea of implementing a new habit, over time our motivation will wane. We cannot ride the high of motivation for long before we lose sight of the end goal either because of other stressors or simply the boredom that sets in after doing something repeatedly for an extended period of time. 

When new habits leave us bored, or when trying to change habits leave us displeased by the end result, we often replace them with something else because our brains are wired to crave pleasure in the form of dopamine. The more an activity activates the dopamine reward circuit, the more we ascribe pleasure to these things. We often think we have to opt into all or nothing thinking when it comes to habit change, meaning that we think we can just stop doing something cold turkey and expect to be able to follow through on it. The challenge is that the cue for the craving is still there. We have to make the cue harder to attain than the new habit we’re trying to implement. For example, if my goal is to stop drinking coffee after 2 pm. It’s probably not the best idea to try to work from my favorite coffee shop in the afternoon. Instead of giving up coffee cold turkey or giving up on working in coffee shops which I enjoy, I can try working from coffee shops in the morning and working from home in the afternoon, so that I have to put in way more effort to go get an afternoon coffee. By doing this, I may be less tempted to buy the coffee because I am removing the cue that leads to the craving that leads to the response and then the immediate reward. As a result, I’m forgoing the instant gratification of the temporary energy that comes from a cup of coffee in order to prioritize quality sleep, lower stress, and  decrease my anxiety levels. By making the craving harder to obtain, it makes it easier to prioritize the thing I really want to do, which is to prioritize my mental and physical health. The takeaway here is not that coffee is bad. I still love coffee, but coffee is no longer contributing to my anxiety in the way it was before, and I no longer feel stuck in a cycle of choosing the thing I say I want to avoid.

• Faith and our Habits

Habits are more than just our biology. Theologian James A.K. Smith writes that “the orientation of the heart happens from the bottom up, through the formation of our habits of desire. Learning to love (God) takes practice.” The things we think, feel and do don’t just happen to us, we have the agency to choose, and with every choice, we are either moving towards or away from the kind of person we intend to become. We’ve so often tried to differentiate between the secular and the spiritual, but in reality the things that we label as spiritual disciplines are not the only “spiritual” habits we do. Everything we do could be looked at through a liturgical perspective, meaning everything we do has meaning and everything we do is shaping who we are. Our habits, all of them not just the “spiritual ones” have the capacity to be holy, but this requires that they are intentionally chosen. They represent a larger “why” that contributes to our ability or lack of ability to live a purposeful life. In her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren writes about her realization that her smartphone had unknowingly become a part of her morning ritual. She writes “my morning smartphone ritual was brief–no more than five or ten minutes. But I was imprinted. My day was imprinted by technology. And like a mountain lion cub attached to her humans, I’d look for all good things to come from glowing screens. Without realizing it, I had slowly built a habit: a steady resistance to and dread of boredom” (Warren, 2016, p. 26) She then describes how she decided to banish her smartphone from the bedroom and start her day by making her bed instead. In reflecting on the decision to make her bed instead she writes that “instead of going to a device for a morning fix of instant infotainment, I touched the tangible softness of our well-worn covers, suggested against wrinkled cotton, felt the hard wood beneath my bare feet. In my creator story, God entered chaos and made order and beauty. In making my bed I reflected that creative act in the tiniest, most ordinary way. In my small chaos, I made small order” (Warren, 2016, p. 28). 

The action of making a bed is so simple, yet in choosing to start her morning with making her bed instead of turning on her phone, she was able to curate a holy moment. This moment of stillness allowed her to choose something that aligned with her “why” instead of defaulting to a habit that wasn’t aligned with the person she was aiming to become. Habits, even habits as small as the decision to make or not make a bed, inform the kind of person we are becoming. 

Finding companions for the journey 

This might feel like a lot of pressure to have to think about the things that you are doing are impacting the person you are becoming. This is why habits are often forged in community or through relationships. ​​The Journal of Clinical Psychology found that 54% of people who decide to make changes to their habits fail within six months. They also found that the average person makes the same resolution up to 10 times without succeeding at it. The American Society of Training and Development found that someone is 65% more likely to commit to a goal and achieve it if they share that goal with someone who they invite to hold them accountable. And the study found that the chances of staying committed to the goal rise to 95% if you implement a weekly appointment time to connect with the person holding you accountable. In other words, there is power in numbers.​​ Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10 says that “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.” You’ve likely heard this bible verse from Ecclesiastes in terms of talking about the importance of friendships or romantic partners, but this verse rings true in the science of habit formation as well. We are able to follow through on our commitments better when we do so in the presence of another. Our minds are better together when we can graciously hold others accountable to coming back to their commitments time and time again no matter how many times we fail. 

• Practicing what we preach 

This week we invite you to think about something you do consistently that may not actually be producing the intended result. You can think macro or micro level on this, but focus on things that you do on a daily basis that impact the way you approach your day. Now, let’s apply the habit loop to this practice

1. Get curious about it: what’s the cue–what is it that makes you want to turn to the behavior during your day?
2. Name it: what’s the motivation–what makes that behavior so alluring to you. Is it the environment? Is it your stress level? Is it fulfilling an unnamed need you need to address?
3. Explain it–what are the steps you have to intentionally (or intentionally) do to complete the behavior. How do you go about acting on the desire?
4.  Own it–what benefit does the behavior serve? How do you feel after you carry out the behavior? Is it actually fulfilling its intended purpose? (i.e. relieving stress, making you more efficient…)

Once you’ve gone through the habit loop with the habit you’d like to shake, repeat this process with a habit that actually addresses the need. For example, in the case of drinking coffee in the afternoon, I might start taking a 15 minute break to practice mindfulness or go for a walk outside to get some sun. When attempting to change a habit, take time to write a new habit down in a place where you can see it visually. I might put it next to my desk so it’s visible when I need the reminder. I also might tell a friend about what I’m doing if I find myself losing motivation to maintain the habit and ask that they check in on me to see how it’s going 

Remember to be kind to your mind. Our minds are amazing muscles, but like any other muscle, we cannot expect it to be strong until we have practiced and practiced and practiced over time, when we’re motivated and when we’re not. 

Further Reading

Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren

You are What You Love by James A.K. Smith