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Date: September 30th
Location: Your couch! See your e-mail for the Zoom link!
Directions: See your e-mail for tips for signing into Zoom!
Credits: Today’s reading is adapted from lessons written by the incomparable Mary Burns for SDCE.
did you brush your teeth this morning?
did you brush your teeth this morning?
Musical Interlude: (100 Years by Five For Fighting)
works cited
works cited
Often, habits are not something we think about all that much. Get dressed in the morning? Check. Brush teeth? Check (hopefully). Make your bed? For those of you over 55, at least 47% of you did, just like every morning. These rituals, or habits, are often things we do automatically.
Our brain doesn’t need to devote a lot of energy to putting our pants on or brushing our teeth because we do them routinely. Think about how many great ideas you have brushing your teeth or taking a shower - that’s because those actions are habitual so our brains work on other problems!
Of course, there are different types of habits:
Forever habits - the things we do all our lives, like brushing teeth, tying shoelaces, brushing our hair.
Good habits - good for us in some, that we work to establish, like exercising, eating well, sleeping well.
Bad habits - things we know are probably not great for us, but we can’t seem to stop doing them without a lot of effort, like smoking, procrastinating, and overspending.
This week’s class will be focusing on exercising and why this is a healthy habit to adopt for our long term health, both mental and physical. But before we talk about the habit we want to embrace, let’s look more closely at how we form or break habits in general.
your brain on habits
your brain on habits
Scientists believe that the basal ganglia, a group of structures located deep in the brain, helps to perform habits. The basal ganglia also helps in development of emotions, memories, and pattern recognition. Decisions are made in your prefrontal cortex, but as soon as you decide to perform a behavior and it becomes automatic, the movement or habit moves to the basal ganglia to free up your prefrontal cortex for other decisions.
Check out this 5 minute video on habits - it provides a great overview on this lesson.
So how do we create habits? They begin with a ‘habit loop’ - a three part process. This includes:
Cue or Trigger - tells the brain to go into autopilot
Routine - the actual behavior
Reward - something your brain likes that helps us remember the habit loop
This habit loop literally forms a new network or neural pathways in our brain! That means that once a new routine is formed, and rewarded, enough times, the behavior takes less and less effort each time. Studies have shown that people will perform the same automated behaviors the same way each time. Think about the way you back out of your driveway. Do you do it the same way each time? That’s a habit!
ch-ch-ch-changes
ch-ch-ch-changes
As we see in the Habit Loop above, we need some sort of reward to make the habit stick. The reward is often a feeling after the task has been done, and can even be as simple as enjoying a nice shower after a workout or the smell of clean laundry after you have washed and dried it each week. BJ Fogg, a psychologist and director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, suggests that forming good habits requires taking advantage of motivation when you have it. So if you’re feeling motivated to change something or start a new habit, go for it! He also cautions people to start small and stay consistent from the beginning. Overhauling your entire exercise or eating regime is too much all at once.
Interestingly, one of the best places to stop a bad habit is actually on vacation! On vacation, all of your standard cues and rewards are missing, so it is much easier for your brain to stop the habit. So if you want to stop smoking or stop shopping Amazon each night, give it up next time you’re out of town to help you stick to it!
For a five minute summary of breaking a bad habit (and forming a new one), check out this video:
habit changing sounds hard!
habit changing sounds hard!
Yes, it is tough to change a habit, even if it is bad for us, once our brain stops actively thinking about the habit. And we know lots of adults struggle to change habits. But there are plenty of tips to help:
Start small! Focus on one behavior, or part of a behavior, at a time.
Stick with it - if it is a daily habit, try not to skip a day until your brain is wired to perform it each time.
Replace a bad habit with a good one - try replacing a late evening snack with some reading time.
Change one habit at a time.
Write down the habit you want to change and your plan for achieving your goal.
Repeat positive behavior as often as you can to establish that new neural network.
Know your cues for the negative behavior and try to reduce them.
Know your reason for quitting the bad habit!
works cited
works cited
https://www.npr.org/2012/03/05/147192599/habits-how-they-form-and-how-to-break-them
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320874.php
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241635
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/form-a-habit1.htm
https://chopra.com/articles/neuroscience-insight-how-to-break-bad-habits
http://www.thepositivepsychologypeople.com/habits-to-happiness/
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