Good vs Bad Habits

When we talk about change, we really talk about removing old habits and replacing them with new better ones. If you think through what habits you perform on a regular basis I’m sure you pretty quickly can divide them in good vs bad habits. More or less all behaviour processes multiple outcomes across times:

• Immediate outcome

• Ultimate outcome

The longer you stick to a habit the more significant the ultimate outcome will become and the ultimate outcome is what defines if the habit contributes positively or negatively to our goals in life. 

• Good habits often have a delayed reward and the immediate outcome tends to be unfavourable. Like going to the gym to workout, it can be challenging to motivate yourself, sometimes frustrating as you don’t see results right away. But if you keep working out the ultimate outcome 6 months, a year from now will be in your favour - you will have a stronger body.
  
  

• Bad habits usually have a favourable immediate outcome. Like eating chocolate, it’s sweet, you get a sugar rush and it tastes nice. But in the long run, if you continue eating chocolate on a regular basis, 6 months, a year from now the ultimate outcome will be unfavourable - you might have put on a few pounds and got bad skin. 

A friend of mine always says: 

• Difficult decisions, easy life. 

• Easy decision - difficult life.  
  
  

Why do we choose bad habits over good habits? 

So how come even though we intellectually know that it’s better for us to go to the gym, still choose to stay at home and eat chocolate? Our brains are wired for immediate returns, 2000 years ago it was a matter of survival to have a brain that was focusing more on getting food right now than what it was on getting a meal in two months time. Since our bad habits serve us in the moment we have a tendency to choose them over the good ones that serve us in the long run. 

Our brain is constantly looking for instant gratification. Something that many companies are using in their business strategies to get us hooked on their product: you order something on Amazon and get it the next day, you finish a Netflix episode and there is a new one starting without you even clicking on anything and you upload a post on Instagram and get likes right away. Instant gratification is constantly reinforced in today’s society, which means we constantly get trained that this is the right way.

How to keep more good habits?

To feel motivated to continue to do more good habits we need to bring the reward we get from performing the behaviour into the present moment. Ideally as close to the behaviour as possible. The reward we get from doing a certain behaviour sends success signals to our brain, so that it associates the good feeling and dopamine releases to the task. Our brain then thinks: oh that felt great, let me look for more opportunities to do that again. The closer the reward is in time to performing the behaviour, the stronger the connection will be between the task and feeling successful.

Celebrate the success

For any habit you would like to create, one important thing is to feel successful after you have performed the new habit. You can do this by having a habit tracker, where you get to do a little tick every time you perform the habit. Another strategy that I use a lot myself is to make a fist and say YES out loud.

Break it down in tiny commitments

To be able to feel successful every time you do the habit, see if you can break it down to something ridiculously tiny. Say that you would like to go for a 5k run. If we break that down to the tiniest step: it can be to get dressed and just run 1 block. When you are running one block you are much more likely to continue running than if you didn’t go out at all. Promising yourself that you will go out and run just 1 block is easier to perform days when you are low on motivation than what a 5k run would be. Remember the days when you are running longer than one block you are overachieving on your commitment to yourself, which will send the success signals to your brain and make you look for opportunities to repeat this again. 

Connect the new behaviour to an existing habit

When we design a new habit, the hardest part is usually to remember to do it. We usually have great intentions when we get started but day 3 or 4 something else happened in the morning and we never got the chance to put on our running shoes. To make sure we remember to do what we want to do, connect the new habit with an old one. I.e. Right after my first cop or tea/coffee I put on my running shoes and head out. The first cup of hot beverage in the morning is your cue to get ready for your run. 

Change is a process

Remember, change is nothing that is happening overnight. It’s a process of design, evaluating and redesign. When we fail to do a behaviour we don’t blame ourselves but instead we troubleshoot to find the design flaw, and try a different approach. Just like you would not tell a baby to stop trying to learn how to walk just because she has been falling down a hundred times, we should not be so quick to think “this is just not for me” the first time we fail at something. But rather try again and again until we learn to master the new behaviour. Be kind to yourself on the way.