Breaking Bad Habits

A habit it made up of 5 things:

We have the cue, meaning we see something, hear something, smell something, or someone says something, a cue can be lots of different things –

And that cue triggers a thought. We think something about the cue.

That thought creates an urge to do something, to take some kind of action.

Which we usually do. We act on the urge.

And then with the action comes some kind of a reward.

Here’s an example:

I’m in the laundry room folding clothes, when all of a sudden, I smell popcorn.

The smell of the popcorn is my cue.

It triggers a thought like: “Mmm, I want some.”

That thought creates an urge or a craving to eat popcorn.

So, I go find the popcorn, and I eat some.

When I eat the popcorn, a feel-good chemical in my brain, called dopamine, is released, which acts as a reward.

Any time the brain senses reward it makes a mental note that this is a good thing, and we should repeat this again.

The more we repeat it, the stronger the brain holds onto it and the more it tries to get us to repeat it.

The more we repeat it, the stronger the habit gets.

We can have all sorts of habit cues

seeing

smelling

hearing

Thoughts and feelings can act as cues as well.

We have our favorite go-to thoughts and go-to feelings.

As soon as we think or feel them, it acts as a cue.

We immediately think a thought and feel an urge to do something.

So how do we break unwanted habits?

It’s simple.

We stop answering the urge with whatever it’s begging for.

And instead, we allow the urge to be there.

We have the cue, the thought, and the urge, but we don’t go on to take the wanted action.

The only action we take is to allow the urge to be there.

We sit with it.

Then we reward ourselves like crazy. . .

A pat on the back!

A bead or money in a jar.

Overly praising ourselves!!!

When we reward ourselves for not answering the urge, the brain will begin to learn that sitting with the urge, whatever it is, is good!

We should do that again.

The more times you don’t answer the urge and you sit with it instead, the faster your brain will unlearn the bad habit.