During a power outage a few weeks ago, my kids and I spent some time talking about how strange it was that we kept flipping light switches when we entered rooms. They weren’t going to do anything, and we knew it. Still, after laughing over flipping the switch in the kitchen, we’d walk into the next room and try to turn the lights on without even thinking about it. The habit of turning on lights has become so ingrained into each of us that it is simply automatic. There are thousands of these behaviors we have repeated so many times that we don’t have to think about doing because we have developed neural pathways that guide our actions. This frees up our brains to focus on other things. Turning on lights, walking, signing our names, using the stairs, etc. are all common and beneficial repeated behaviors. For some folks, these neural pathways become a problem. I know quite a few people who compulsively grab snacks off the table in the break room at work or light up cigarette after cigarette without even thinking about the action. These unhealthy behaviors are particularly difficult to break because they are built into our brains, and they tend to come with some form of immediate reward. For example, smokers have a neural pathway that makes the behavior unconscious, and they receive a dose of nicotine every time they do it. This makes a habit very difficult to break. This is also the reason it is difficult to establish brand new good habits. For example, during this time of year, many people set out to take up regular exercise habits. A new habit lacks an establish neural pathway that makes it automatic for you to go to the gym or go for a run in the morning. With repetition, we can certainly establish neural pathways that make these behaviors automatic and reduce the amount of willpower necessary to repeat them daily. However, exercise doesn’t have the same type of instant reward that snacking or checking Facebook have. It usually takes months for weight loss or improved fitness to become a reality. Separating the reward from the new habit we are trying to form makes it especially difficult to follow through with and maintain new behaviors. This truth of human behavior can be used to your advantage in establishing new habits. First, it is the case that if you repeat a behavior enough you will eventually reach a point where it becomes automatic to some degree. So, there is hope in that if you can establish a new behavior for long enough, it will become automatic to a degree. There are a ton of ways to approach reinforcing new habits and discouraging old ones. One of the ones I have found is most effective is trying rewards to desired behaviors. It’s quite simple: When you perform the new habit, you do something immediately to reward yourself. This can be a hot shower after exercise, 10 minutes of social media time after every hour of focused work time, tv time after time spent reading, or some other pleasant experience. Associating a hard new behavior with a reward has been demonstrated time and again to be an effective strategy for behavior change. The concept works with negative behaviors as well. I had a friend who was working to quit smoking. Every time he made it through a day without smoking a cigarette, he would add a couple dollars to a fund he was going to use to upgrade his bow. Resisting a bad behavior resulted in a reward immediately as he watched his savings grow. In the long term, he was able to reward himself in a larger way. I have read about people saving every week when they resisted the urge to eat out and eventually using the fund to go on a fancy vacation. The immediate reward was the growing pile of cash, and the knowledge that there was a larger payoff in the future.
