HABITS: Make ‘em or Break ‘em Spring 2023

June 3, 2023

Most of us live habitually already. Most of us just aren’t aware of it. 

Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes that Stick.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in a plastic state. 

William James, early American psychologist from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s

Regardless of what we say we believe, it’s our daily habits that reveal and shape our actual theology. 

Tish Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life.

Justin Earley, The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction.

Many counseling clients bring concerns involving relational tensions, the painful emotions of depression and anxiety, or troubles dealing with major life transitions and losses. Yet, the changes required for clients to return to a positive state are not limited to processing and working through thoughts and feelings. Often overlooked is that in order to feel and think differently, they often need to make behavioral changes to actually live differently. For these clients, the desire to establish new ways of living prompts the need for new and healthier habits. In many cases, this requires deconstructing and breaking out of maladaptive habits.

Recently, these conversations with clients started me on a personal research project concerning habits. Over the past two years, I have read a number of books concerning the science of habit. I have augmented this academic research by watching a number of videos on building and maintaining habits. Throughout this time, I’ve had intentional and thoughtful conversations about the nature of habits—how they form us, how they get our attention, and how they help determine what we love.

This Counseling Newsletter is the distillation of what I have learned about habits: what they are, how they shape us, how they are built and broken, and how we might use the science of habit in our own lives.

Habits Are Not Built Upon Willpower or Motivation

What makes for an amazing story about a changed life? Often it revolves around a dramatic, single, firm decision coupled with a strong commitment. Add a powerful squirt of willpower to fuel and propel that change. While this may make for a winsome story, it is not how lasting change usually works. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis.  But, in most cases, for durable change, the key is small improvements on a daily basis—small and consistent steps.

In most conversations about starting new habits and routines, motivation and willpower get a lot of the focus. It seems that we all look for ways to supercharge our level of excitement, with the hope that we can maintain and sustain this commitment over time. Conventional wisdom asserts that motivation is key. But motivation, it turns out, is unreliable and fickle.

Motivation is like a party animal—a great companion for a night out, but not someone you would rely on to pick you up from the airport. Willpower doesn’t offer much help either, because, over time, willpower fatigues. Willpower is not powerful enough to overcome an entrenched and well-practiced habit. It doesn’t become stronger or more resilient with use—it weakens.

The assumption goes that people with high self-control and internal discipline have a huge reservoir of willpower. In reality, people who are recognized as being high in self-control are people who do not rely on self-control. Rather, they arrange their lives so that their habits become relatively automatic. People who appear to have tremendous self-control aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Rather, these “disciplined” people are more practiced at structuring their lives in a way that aligns with their goals. They spend less time in tempting situations, and therefore reduce the need to rely on self-control and willpower.

By relying on good intentions and willpower, we overlook the hostile environments in which habits operate. In these situations, making one difficult decision after another becomes increasingly taxing and we get worn out. Willpower and discrete decisions rely on executive control in which we employ effortful cognitive processes to select, manage, and monitor our behaviors. This results in a draining top-down process, which is  pitted against our habitual and automatic responses. The result is an unfair fight. To say that we do things because we “will them” is flattering and feels empowering, but it is largely untrue.

Habits are not Decisions

Decisions and habits are opposites. While decisions require deliberation, habits do not. Habits are not primarily developed and built by executing decisions or choices. Interestingly, the word “decide” and “homicide” have the same etymological root meaning to “cut down” or “to kill.” When we make a clear decision we are eliminating or “killing” other options. This is difficult and sometimes painful—no one wants to limit their options. Consequently, we resist making decisions because we want to keep all of our options open. But, by not choosing, we remain stuck. Doing is different than deciding.  It’s fair to say that decisions are primarily thoughts and intentions, while habits involve action and behavior.

We tend to grow to love the things that we do repeatedly—simply because we have grown accustomed to them through exposure and familiarity. We often develop preferences for things for no other reason than they feel familiar. Efficiency is another reason we like repeated experiences. Past exposure and experience signal safety. Initially, our choices may be accidental or unintentional, but quickly they become our default and turn into our habits.

Habits Shape and Inform What We Love

Most people would not assume that the formation of habits and the emotion of love could be closely related. Yet, we learn to love not primarily by acquiring new information about what we should love, but through practices, routines, and rituals that form habits. These habits shape and inform who and what we end up loving. This happens from the “bottom up” through proximity and repetitive action. Much of this process is happening “under the hood”—beneath our awareness and outside of our deliberate consciousness. A habit is much less of a conscious choice than it is a “default mode,” or the way that we tend to “tilt.”

Our habits are like an internal compass that orients us in the world. They influence our movements in the world and the way we engage with others without even thinking about it. Habits quietly set our default orientation, which propel us toward the choices we make. This process happens in the background. A large percentage of our actions on any given day are done out of habit. Habits are automatic choices that set the stage for the decisions that will follow. Habits are the on-ramp to the highway of other behaviors and choices. You know how it goes: you go to quickly check your phone for messages, only to find that you’ve spent twenty-five minutes flicking through screens.

True behavior change is a form of identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with it is that it has become a part of your identity. Once your behavior and your identity are aligned, you are no longer just pursuing behavior change—you are acting like the type of person you already believe yourself to be. To change what you do is to change who you are. There is a feedback loop in all of this. Your habits shape your identity, and your identity shapes your habits. You become your habits.

What Is a Habit?

Do something once and it’s a decision. Do something many times, and it becomes a habit. Habits make challenging and difficult tasks seem easy and safe. Driving a car is probably one of most complicated and risky things we do on a daily basis. New drivers have not had the opportunity to develop helpful and adaptive automatic driving behaviors (habits). So for them, driving a car is a demanding, and at times, an overwhelming task requiring a long succession of choices and decisions, all while steering a two-ton mass of machinery.

Habits hate variety, and reciprocally, variety weakens habits. Habits love routine and predictability. If you aren’t arranging your life to reliably cue your new habit, then that habit will not likely take hold. You want to keep the habit-promoting context as stable as possible, choosing specific cues, prompts, and triggers that support your desired habit.

How Does a Habit Work?

Repeating the same activity or task in the same way has the effect of reorganizing your brain. The habit is triggered by a prompt. The cue primes you and then nudges you, guiding you into the new desired behavior.

Habits work for us in ways that conscious decisions never can. Habits work automatically, in the background. Habits avoid debates. Habits slip by the internal arguments and get straight to work. This is what habits are for.

The mechanisms of habit don’t take up space in our conscious mind. Our habits function outside of our immediate awareness. A habit refers to how an action is performed, not what the action is. You can make any behavior habitual as long as you behave in the same way each time. Habits are mental shortcuts in which our decision-making is bypassed. The executive system no longer needs to manage the routine, and fewer conscious decisions are necessary.

Habits and Context

Our behaviors are affected immensely by the context around us. We are not as autonomous as we would like to believe. Yet, we tend to focus our attention on the internal process of decision-making when we should be focused on the prompting nature of our context, how environmental prompts “set-the-table” for certain behaviors, and how these contexts actually influence those behaviors. Self-control is almost always a byproduct of situational control. These contexts enable habits to work so smoothly that we hardly think about them. Environment is the invisible hand that guides behavior. Every habit is context dependent.

Your wake-up routine confirms that mornings are not a time for decisions. Rather, your morning routine is a fertile garden for the planting and growth of durable habits. These contexts (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen) carry predictable prompts. The repeated cues activate the same habits. Morning rituals—coffee and breakfast—are a powerhouse of habits. You decide what to do based on what you have just finishing doing. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior. Going to the bathroom cues washing and drying your hands, which reminds you to put the dirty towel in the washer, so you load the towels and put laundry soap on your shopping list. (This brings to mind the children’s book, If You Give a Moose a Muffin.)

How Is A Habit Built?

Behavior change through self-control is not nearly as effective as behavior change through altering our contexts. Choose some daily behavior that already occurs in a predictable and reliable way. We refer to these as anchors. Then, connect it to the new desired behavior that you want to build into a habit. The existing predictable behavior now serves as a prompt for the new habit that you are adding to your routine.

In this way, we are now in the right context with the right prompt. If we strategically arrange our world, we can achieve similar results to those who seem to be much more disciplined. We are using the leverage of already-occurring contexts in our lives to build new behavioral chains.

This process of stacking, or piggybacking, is critical for establishing new habits. The entire sequence is now treated as a single item. The automation is already in place (triggered by the context and the prompt). You are just adding an additional step. If you are facing and walking in the right direction—keep walking and always include this new additional step every time.

Your habit formation is not as complicated or as fragile as you might think. Building a new habit does not require perfection but, it does require persistence, repetition, and consistent use of context paired with specific triggers or cues. As you are building your habit, if you miss a day or two, or completely “fall off the wagon,” that is not the end—don’t despair. Instead, use this as an opportunity to revise, strengthen, and sharpen your context and prompt. Make the situation tighter and clearer. Your habit is still forming. It’s a forward-stepping process.

If you miss a day, get back into it as quickly as possible. Never miss twice in a row if you can avoid it. The first mistake, the first miss, is never the one that ruins you. It is the series of repeated misses that follow. Missing once is an accident; missing twice is the start of a new habit. You may not realize how valuable it is to show-up. If you can’t do it perfectly, that just means you’re normal. Perfection is not the requirement—showing up is. Showing up re-affirms your new identity. You are becoming the type of person that does not miss the workout, one workout at a time. You are the type of person who makes dinner at home, the person who takes time to read. Show up when you don’t feel like it. Showing up counts even when you do less than you hoped. It is not all or nothing.

What Accounts for the Persistence, Durability, and Longevity of Habits? How Do People Maintain Consistent Habits?

When acting within a habit, we find ourselves acting before we can consider whether the behavior is what we truly want. Our decision making has become so streamlined that, given the right context and prompt, we consistently move into action. With regular repetition, we stop consulting our intentions. Instead, we just take the next step. People who go to the gym simply go to the gym. Habits come from consistently “obeying” clear contexts and prompts and then engaging in the same reliable behavior. Behavior begets behavior. If you just keep doing it, it will begin happening with more and more ease.

Habits allow us to repeat what we’ve done in the past. Habits rely upon four things:

1. A specific, small behavior that we want to initiate. Lasting habits start small.
2. A specific context or setting (anchor) in which the habit will occur.
3. An identified and clear prompt or cue that signals us to engage in this new desired behavior.
4. Celebration, giving ourselves credit for engaging in the behavior.

What Factors Make for a Robust and Long-lasting Habit?

• Consistent context (same place, same time).
• Attachment to an existing routine (anchor) so that the new habit has a predictable and reliable trigger or prompt.
• The new habit neatly fits into a pre-existing pattern.
• With the new habit, you are not required to make a decision.
• Strong habits take effort off your hands. The decision-making process is eliminated.
• You end up streamlining and not struggling.

How Can I Weaken Or Break An Unwanted Habit?

Sadly, the habit mechanism does not discriminate between behaviors that are beneficial and those that are harmful. From repetition comes habit. We often end up embracing repeated behaviors and habits that are not good for us. We keep procrastinating, overeating, spending too much time playing video games or on social media, and not enough time exercising. This is because it is what we have always done. We persist in these bad habits for little reason aside from the pull of familiarity. We can even end up liking our maladaptive habits.

Corrective information and insight on their own won’t get in the way of an established bad habit. This is because it is the procedural coding—the contexts and prompts that lead you to repeatedly engage in the same behavior in the same way—that protects the bad habit. To effectively disrupt a bad habit, friction and distance are required. Bringing friction to a bad habit involves activating any restraining force that makes it more effortful to engage in the bad habit behavior. A good place to start is to target the context in which the bad habit usually occurs, and then eliminate that context from your life. Removing the prompt is the best first step toward stopping a behavior from happening. Identify the prompts, cues, or triggers that consistently precede your initial steps into the bad habit.

You must also address the proximity factor. Create distance between yourself and the factors connected to the bad habit. We tend to engage with whatever, or whomever, is nearby while overlooking what is farther away. Just putting items, or people, slightly out of reach reduces the habit’s strength. For instance, a familiar marketing saying in grocery stores is, “eye level is buy level.” Items nearer to eye level are more likely to be purchased than the items above our heads or below our waists. Make the elements of your bad habits unavailable, or at the very least, harder to get to.

Friends Who are Sticky in a Good Way

As we have reviewed, durable and sustainable change is rarely the result of a single dramatic event.  Rather, habits that stick are built from seemingly tiny behaviors that are stacked and then reliably executed over time in a predictable way.  In a similar way, lasting habits are rarely built by ourselves—most lasting habits don’t come solo.  Much more often we will find that new habits become old and sustained habits as they are planted and nurtured in the fertile soil of community, accountability, and social support.

Toward this end, it is important to let trusted others know of the tiny changes you are stacking into your daily and weekly routine.  Inform them of the changes you are making so they might come alongside you, encourage you, and check on you.

Approximately 15 years ago I began a program of regularly swimming in the early morning.  This was a new habit and discipline.  I rearranged my bedroom and bathroom environments to reduce the “friction” in order to increase the probability that I would obey the alarm clock and get out of bed, put on my workout clothes, grab my swim bag, walk into the morning cold, warm-up the truck, and then drive to the pool.  I was using anchors and prompts to move me out the door.

Yet, I was also drawn and encouraged to make it to the pool (even before the sun came up) because I knew that there would be swimming friends waiting for me and expecting me to show up.  There were times when I was tempted to crawl back into my warm bed.  And on a few occasions, I succumbed to this temptation.  Yet, as I pushed forward I did so, at least in part, because I did not want to disappoint my swimming partners and I did not want to be in a position of needing to offer a thin excuse on why I did not make it to the pool. This supportive group of swimmers offered both a “push” and a “pull” that helped me stay with the new habit I was building.

It has now been nearly 15 years of early morning swimming (four mornings per week) and this habit has been beneficial in so many ways.  I am surprised to say that the alarm clock is now my friend.  I don’t dread the 5:00 AM alarm.  Getting up has led to early morning moments for a cup of coffee, thoughtful reading, and regular exercise in the pool.  Much of this benefit is owed to the other people with whom I share a pool lane.  In order to build a habit that sticks, and is sticky, it is critical to have a community of encouragement and accountability.

 

Starting with Tiny Habits
(Adapted from B.J. Foggs’ Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything)

Designing Your New Habit

• Treat the new behavior that you are building as a science project.
• To build a habit, you will be redesigning your environment to reduce the friction between you and the habit you are building.
• Design for simplicity and reliability.
• In behavior design, you are helping yourself do what you already want to do.
• Desire + Capacity/Ability + Anchor/Prompt/Cue: When these three elements converge at the same moment, a new habit can happen. All behavior is driven by these three elements.
• Motivation exists on a continuum, but prompts are black and white.

 

Start Simple

• Choose a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life, and nurture its growth.
• If you want a habit to grow big, you need to start small and simple. Changes that initially seem small and unimportant will compound with remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them.
• At first, these tiny routines seem insignificant, but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that far outweighs the cost of their initial investment. They are both small and mighty.

 

Start Easy and Tiny

• How might I make this behavior easier to enact?
• By going tiny, you create consistency.
• No matter how much you want to cultivate a healthy habit, you won’t be able to do it reliably if you start big. Tiny allows you to start right now.
• Make the behavior so tiny that you don’t need much motivation.
• The easier the behavior is to enact, the more likely the behavior will become a habit.
• Ask yourself, what is making this daily routine hard to do and how can I make this behavior easier?

 

Anchors

• An anchor is something in your life that is already stable. You are attaching your new habit to something solid and reliable.
• Use the connectedness of behaviors to your advantage. The key is to tie your desired behavior onto something you already do each day.
• Take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading to the next.
• The anchor moment reminds you to engage in the new, tiny behavior.
• Find a good prompt and make the behavior easier to do. Make it obvious and make it easy.
• The most common cues involve time and location: When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.
• No behavior happens without a prompt. Prompts are the cues that remind us to act—the spark that lights the fire.
• Do the tiny behavior immediately after the anchor moment.
• With a sturdy anchor you not relying on yourself or anyone else to remind you. You’re not overwhelmed with a variety of prompts. Your day-to-day life is the prompt.
• Habit-stacking is using a cue in a highly specific and immediately actionable way.

1. 1. Alarm goes off
   2. Get out of bed and stretch and do three squats
   3. Shower
   4. Brush teeth
   5. Get dressed
   6. Brew coffee and while it brews drink 8 ounces of water
   7. Prepar and eat breakfast
   8. Take kids to school
   9. Drive to work, but park in the far end of the parking lot

Be on Your Own Team

• When you “obey” the prompt and engage in the “tiny behavior,” celebrate! Give yourself credit.
• Don’t engage in “self-trash talk.”
• If you don’t perfectly follow through on the identified prompts, clarify and sharpen the context and the anchor.
• Think through how you might make the behavior easier to do.

 

Suggestions for Further Reading

James Clear—Atomic Habits, 2018.

B.J. Fogg—Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything, 2020.

James K.A. Smith—You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, 2016.

W. Wood—Good Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes Stick, 2019.